Thursday, January 1, 2009

The Secret Life of Cows or Homepage Usability

The Secret Life of Cows

Author: Glen Wexler

In one of the most imaginative books you'll pick up this year, photographic artist Glen Wexler fuses reality and fantasy to create an alternative world where cows can do just about anything. Awards and recognition for Wexler's work come from such prestigious sources as Communication Arts, ZOOM, French PHOTO, Creativity, Graphis, Photo District News, New York Art Directors' Club, Beldings, NPPA, and Key Art Awards. Wexler's digitally enhanced photo-illustrations are paired with udderly funny musings from the likes of Dave Barry, Ogden Nash, and Eric Idle, who authors the book's foreword and happens to "know a bit about cows in comedy." Wexler put more than 75 days of photography and over 600 post-production hours into this book, working with EmmyAward-winning production designer Anthony Tremblay, Muppet wardrobe designer James Hayes and pyrotechnic expert Joe Viskocil, among others. No detail or pixel has been overlooked in the creation of this "mooving" photographic expos©.



Books about: Fire Up Your Metabolism or Brain Injury Survival Kit

Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed

Author: Jakob Nielsen

Quick. You have 10 seconds to show your face to the world. What does your homepage say? In a world of information overload and dying dot.coms, your homepage must grab the attention of visitors, tell them where they are, and let them know where they can go. Does your site pass the test? Homepage Usability is all about making that first impression. Is your tag line effective? Can visitors find your search box? How difficult is the page to navigate? What percentage of your homepage is devoted to actual content? By putting 50 of today's top sites to the test, web usability experts jakob Nielsen and Marie Tahir show you what makes for good -- and not so good -- first impressions. This book contains hundreds of examples that you can employ on your own homepage. Apply the best. Avoid the worst.

Library Journal

Nielsen, dogmatic don of web usability, and his strategy director Tahir believe that a company needs a well-designed homepage to succeed online. They provide 113 brief usability guidelines that lead into a chapter on homepage statistics, giving readers an idea of conventions to follow or break. The homepages of 50 major web sites, from About.com to Yahoo.com, are then pictured and critiqued in terms of those recommendations and statistics. A useful resource for both novice and professional web designers; recommended for all libraries. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

Nielson and Tahir (web usability experts) offer tips on how to design a web homepage that elicits a favorable first impression. First, they analyze guidelines and statistics on what makes a site attractive and usable. Next, reviews of 50 websites illustrate solutions to design challenges, emphasizing both what's wrong with certain designs, and what works well. Topics include general issues (links, navigation, search, graphic design, URLs, advertising, welcomes, customization, tools and task shortcuts, and others) and statistics (download time, basic page layout, fundamental page design elements, navigation, typography, graphics and multimedia, and advertising). Heavily illustrated in color. Oversize: 10x10". Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)



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