Advanced functionality requires Internet-enabled client-server software with optimized user interfaces that cannot be delivered in a Web browser. Reserve the Web for hypertext and
content features.
Users demand compliance with established design conventions. No site can stand out any more; all are part of a single interwoven user experience; the Web as a whole dictates design
Four years of progress in Web browsers have given us more fancy presentation but almost no improvements in helping users navigate the Web and getting the information they need.
CSS promotes site consistency and improved usability if linked (not embedded), centrally designed (not by page authors), and actively evangelized with example-rich style manuals. Respect user preferences.
The telephone is a better metaphor than television for thinking about the Web and its potential: the Web is a 1-to-1, narrowcast, low bandwidth medium that is user-driven and where everybody can publish content.
All usability studies show that fast response times are essential for Web usability: let's believe the data for once! Advice for speeding up sites despite the fact that bandwidth is going down, not up.
The file system has been a trusted part of most computers for many years, and will likely continue as such in operating systems for many more. However, several emerging trends in user interfaces indicate that the basic file-system model is inadequate to fully satisfy the needs of new users, despite the flexibility of the underlying code and data structures.
Originally published as: Nielsen, J. (1996). The impending demise of file systems. IEEE Software 13, 2 (March).
In the long term we will need about a million times more bandwidth than a T1, as shown by the following list of requirements for the perfect user interface.
Many users of the World Wide Web are unaware of the rich history of the hypertext field, and those who do not understand history are often doomed to repeat it. Case in point, the release of the Java language and the HotJava browser will probably mimic the events that followed the introduction of Hypercard in 1987.
Chapter 8 from Jakob Nielsen's book, Multimedia and Hypertext: The Internet and Beyond, explores a variety of information retrieval strategies for dealing with the ever-increasing volume of information on the internet.
Excerpt from Jakob Nielsen's 1995 book, Multimedia and Hypertext: The Internet and Beyond, offers predictions for the short term (3 to 5 year) and medium term (5 to 10 year) and long term (10 to 20 year) future of hypertext and the internet.
Chapter 3 from Jakob Nielsen's book, Multimedia and Hypertext, describes the major milestones for hypertext, the internet, and the world wide web, including Vannevar Bush's Memex and Doug Engelbart's landmark demo of the online system (NLS.)
Hypertext systems include a Presentation level, a Hypertext Abstract Machine (HAM) level, and a Database level. The following sections describe each of the levels in further detail, starting at the bottom. (Chapter 5 from Jakob Nielsen's book, Multimedia and Hypertext.)
Several new user interface technologies and interaction principles seem to define a new generation of user interfaces that will move off the flat screen and into the physical world to some extent. Many of these next-generation interfaces will not have the user control the computer through commands, but will have the computer adapt the dialogue to the user's needs based on its inferences from observing the user. This article defines twelve dimensions across which future user interfaces may differ from the canonical window systems of today: User focus, the computer's role, interface control, syntax, object visibility, interaction stream, bandwidth, tracking feedback, interface locus, user programming, and software packaging.
Nielsen, J. (1993). Noncommand user interfaces. Communications of the ACM 36, 4 (April), 83-99.