Defensive Design for the Web

Defensive Design for the Web [Amazon] is among the most eye-opening books written on web design. I cannot recommend this enough to anyone who hopes to have people use his site.

The structure of the book is quite simple: it is a series of annotated screenshots of websites getting user interaction right and websites getting it very, very wrong.

CDNow tells me my “Address Exceeds Maximum Allowable Length” but doesn’t tell me the actual maximum length I can use. As a result, I’m left with the tedious trial-and-error method as the only way to determine how much text is allowed. Plus, who uses language such as “exceeds maximum allowable length?”

—Defensive Design for the Web, p70

The primary takeaway from this book is that getting error handling right is hard but it’s worth it. As programmers too close to the machine, sometimes we’re tempted to have our software scream “ILLEGAL INPUT” at inept users and be done with it. This book will embarrass you into remembering that that is a tremendously bad idea. And people will make fun of you if you do it.

Besides keeping you out of Error’d, Defensive Design for the Web will also inspire you to handle odd and exceptional cases cleverly. It shows well-designed 404 pages, useful “no results” searches, and reasonable recourse when a product in your shopping cart is out-of-stock.

All programmers are lazy. Good programmers are just the ones who know when not to be. If it does nothing else, Defensive Design for the Web will splash some water in your face to keep you awake when handling the out-of-the-ordinary.

More information:

• Peachpit Press’ product page has a free chapter you can download in PDF format. It’ll tide you over until your copy arrives in the mail.
• Defensive Design for the Web was written by 37signals, the web shop you may know of from them being totally awesome.