The Wireless Web Usability Handbook

Rating:
Summary: The buzzword buzzword handbook
Review: As a person practicing and researching usability, I was interested to see what can be written about this challenging subject.

In the index of the book, you can find chapters suchs as: Cell-Phone-Class Devices; the physcal layer, the logical layer, the cognitive layer etc. The same goes for PDAs, pager-based systems and so on. It seems very interesting...

... until you read the text. For example, the book tells us that the Cell-phone class device has a logical layer that "is really a tiny PC, with small amounts of 'main' memory..." This is so rude, oversimplified metaphor, that it is more misleading than anything else! This book is full of such oversimplified descriptions or lists of obviousnesses.

Big disappointment.

Rating:
Summary: Usability book?
Review: I must say I'm more than disappointed. The book really doesn't seem to have much to say about usability considering the wireless web. Although technical stuff is presented quite widely, there is no point in that. "Device x does not support audio". That doesn't help! There is no path whatsoever from those techical details to how they should be dealt with. It's all that "less is beautiful" abstract emptiness..

"Use emulators" - How does the author think these kind of apps are developed? Of course one must use emulators to get anything working!

The "new PCD specific heuristics": "Safety - does your device/system irradiate your users with unsafe amounts of microwave energy?" For crying out loud! I'll have to watch out not to radiate other people (by using radiating XHTML code :)! Other heuristics are not any better or more useful.. And a lot of the book is the same old Nielsen related stuff (why here - again?)..

Well, a bit angry review I guess. Just seems that there's really no point in this book..

Rating:
Summary: Long-waited & deeply disappointing!!
Review: What a waste of time and money to have this book! No more needs to be said but you are not going to gain anything substantial from this book. If the author's book on the wired web usability has some value, this on is just a collection of obsolete whitepapers and heuristic principles.

Don't buy it if you can resist the title.