Designing Web Interfaces: Principles And Patterns For Rich Interactions [Book Review]

User interface experts Bill Scott and Theresa Neil present over 75 design patterns for building web interfaces that provide rich interactions. These practices are grouped into six key principles to help you easily take advantage of the web technologies available today.

The cover of Designing Web Interfaces differs from most other books in the Web and Internet categories. You won’t find any poorly laid-out type or Web 2.0 graphics here. Instead, illustrations of animals dominate the covers of O’Reilly Media’s web development books for a nice alternative.

The book has been organised by it’s key principles, rather than by generic titles. These allow the reader to jump quickly to the best category suited for their project. Principles include: “Make It Direct”, “Keep It Lightweight”, “Stay On The Page”, “Provide An Invitation”, “Use Transitions” and “React Immediately”.

Each process and pattern of web interface design is clearly explained to the reader first with a description, then “Considerations” (which outline any important issues), “Examples” (with screenshots) and finally a very useful “Best Practises” (bullet-point summary). If you follow the book properly then there really is no excuse not to be able to justify your design decisions to clients or colleagues.

Visualising these examples is made a lot easier by seeing screenshots of the actual web sites, rather than simply reading about them. Being able to critique the subtle effects and styling shown in the screenshots also helps when considering how far these elements can be customised in your own projects.

Reading this book opened my eyes to some clever usability options that I might not have previously thought to use. Some particularly interesting examples include “Group Editing” (the “wiggly” editing status of Apple iPhone’s icon page is one case), “Hover-Reveal Tools” (making tools available only when the user hovers over them) and “Drag and Drop Invitations” (showing the user where they have taken their item from and where they should put it).

If you find yourself applying in-page editing tools, overlays, scrolling, pagination, invitations, transitions and feedback events to your interface designs, then Designing Web Interfaces will certainly come in handy.

Creating the perfect user interface is all about trial and error. Whether you are a Designer or Developer, it makes sense to have a book like Designing Web Interfaces readily available to assist with your decision-making. This book has provided me with a large offline reference of usage patterns and user interface elements and is great to have close by when working on complex web sites.

— Find this book on Booktopia.com.au (AU) (affiliated)
— Find this book on Amazon Books (US) (affiliated)
— Find this book on Book Depository (UK) (affiliated)

About The Reviewer

James Santilli is a Digital Designer from Sydney, Australia. Designer's Bookshelf was born from his passion for design books. By curating books on the Bookshelf, he hopes to help fellow designers fill their collections with the best quality titles.

Related Books

Advertisement Advertise with us