Most of them will sound too familiar to you (content is king, flash abuse anyone?), but when Norman, Maeda and peers write something you’d better read it. Here are the 10 commandments with more examples and comments of my own.

1. Thou shalt not abuse Flash
   Actually thou shalt not use Flash at all as an information container or as an interface replacement. Your users have already learnt how to use HTML interaction conventions. Don’t make them learn again something they’ll use only in your site.
   Hall of shame: Camper shoes
2. Thou shalt not hide content
   Readers come to your web for your content or for your ads? Do not hide contents behind ads. Google got to the top with AdWords and not with banners.
   Hall of shame: La Vanguardia online
3. Thou shalt not clutter
   The web is enough complex as it is. The huge load of information is difficult to structure and you should help your users once they land on your site. Unnecessary graphical artifacts, excess of information, poor website structure, lack of visual hierarchy, ad abuse, and misuse of the HTML conventions won’t make your user happy.
   Hall of shame: Catalunya Ràdio, RENFE
4. Thou shalt not overuse glassy reflections
   Apple’s website looks cool with all reflections on their products and we all love it (There’s even a reflection in the header of this site!). But this is Apple. Don’t think that you’ll turn your company in a 2.0 project by just adding a reflection to your logo.
   Hall of shame: Apple’s Mobile Me logo
5. Thou shalt not name your Web 2.0 company with an unnecessary surplus or dearth of vowels
   Web 2.0 is full of unique funny names with half of the vowels missing. If your company has not embraced the 2.0 philosophy getting rid of some vowels won’t help, and neither will adding an i at the beginning.Here’s a Web 2.0 company name generator to get your own.
   Hall of shame: iStalkr.com (not active anymore after a year. Bad naming for an RSS aggregator?)
6. Thou shalt worship at the altar of typography
   95% of the information on the web is written language. It is only logical to say that a web designer should get good training in the main discipline of shaping written information, in other words: Typography.
   Read all about it in the seminal article Web Design is 95% Typography
   Hall of shame: YouTube.com
7. Thou shalt create immersive experiences
   What else can you say? You’t better give your audience some good experience, content and functionality wise. After all they’re giving you their most valuable asset: time.
   Hall of shame: Second Life (funny that one of the worst immersive experience is a 3D immersive website)
8. Thou shalt be social
   Online success stories share the “social” tag. In fact marketers are working hard to find some business model around them. MySpace, Facebook, Last.fm, Flickr, Bebo or YouTube are the names of the game.
   Hall of shame: Second Life
9. Thou shalt embrace proven technologies
   Simple good. Complex bad. Google, YouTube, Facebook, Craigslist or Wikipedia have all something in common: plain old XHTML and a simple CSS. Simplicity goes a long way.
   Hall of shame: Second Life
10. Thou shalt make content king
    People are not interested in your abilities as interface designer or information architect. People want to get to the contents they’re looking for. The interface is just the means to them and not the end. A good interface will go unnoticed and so will the work of its designer. The better the designer the less you’ll notice her work. A nice paradox.
    Hall of shame: Any web with a Skip Intro link. Here’s Google’s Skip Intro new feature.

Original article: 10 Commandments of Web Design
Businessweek’s poll The Best and Worst of web design

Snapshot taken with Safari on Mac OS Leopard.

Cool design as long as you don’t see it too often.

PNG Icons & Icon Packs Download | IconsPedia

More pictures at Yadogg » Vinyl Sleeve Heads

Head to forwebdesigners.com (the name says it all, doesn’t it?) and start browsing and downloading.

A word of advice: you can spend so much time browsing cool stuff that you may end up doing nothing. But you probably know the feeling if you’re reading this.

Spanish is a bonus as if you happen to understand it you’ll be able to hear/see how the words match the type and the motion graphics.

This video is no doubt a commercial application (rendition?) of some previous motion typography clips such as Pulp Fiction’s What Does Marcellus Wallas Looks Like? or Abbot & Costello’s Who’s On First. For more of the kind search YouTube by Motion Typography.

Cuarteto de Nos page on YouTube.

A simple and yet well designed game that opens new perspectives for interactivity and user interface.

This is the work of Petri Purho a student at Helsinki Polytechnic that produces a game every month (he programs them in under 7 days) exploring new forms of gameplay.

You can download the game from his blog for free: Kloonigames » Blog Archive » Crayon Physics (windows only for the moment)

Does this sound familiar to you? I bet it does if you’re a graphic designer.

To all my graphic designer friends: Make My Logo Bigger Cream, a hilarious video about a too well known situation. Enjoy!