The author, Robert Hoekman Junior, had me at hello with his book's dedication - "This book is dedicated to you, the hardworking designers and developers who have made it your mission to improve user experiences on the web. Keep fighting the good fight. It's working."

What a great way to start a book about interface design concepts.

The first thing that struck me about the book was how small it was, slimline, compact. But the last thing this book is lacking is content. It's a book aimed at the professional web developer who wants to learn more about getting visitors to stick around on their sites. But saying that, I feel, It's a book that anyone interested in the Internet should read, especially those considering buying a website for their business. Because it details, comically at times, the big do's and don'ts of interface design and to my mind it cuts through a lot of the marketing garbage and defines in real terms what works.

My favourite example was a home page which contained nothing but a page full of welcome text, albeit expertly written by the company's marketing department. The way this was honed down to what would actually work, i.e. a link with two words "course finder", was very amusing to me and enlightening in some respects as well. What busy people want is a call to action, not to sit and read a load of text before they can find what they actually came for.

And, I say that with all sincerity because I'm now wearing my Editor's cap and the words I write I expect to be read, but I am playing to my audience, who have come to read. This book's example of a website selling training courses and hiding the fact in a plethora of words got straight to the point the author was trying to make, and that is "a think out loud approach to interface design to show us how to look critically at design decisions to ensure that human beings, the kind that make mistakes and do things we don't expect, can walk away from our software feeling productive, respected, and smart".

The author has roughly 30 examples in the book but you not only get the tips and examples you get the author's definitions of why they work, which is much better because the knowledge imparted stays around a little longer. This is definitely a book that makes you look at interface design from the point of view of the visitor, you know them, they're the people you want to stay around. You want them to interact with your site the way you intended and this book sets about to tell you how to achieve that.