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Business Week, with the help of Don Norman, John Maeda, Khoi Vinh and Jeffrey Zeldman among others, just published an excellent article with the 10 commandments of web design.

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