It's time for Jakob Nielsen's Top Ten Web Design Mistakes. In 2005 Jakob has asked his readers about their opinion. Here's the result:

#1 Legibility problems due to small fonts and low contrast
#2 Non-standard links that violate common expectations
#3 Flash with no purpose beyond annoying people
#4 Content that is not written for the web
#5 Bad search
#6 Browser incompatibility
#7 Cumbersome forms
#8 No contact information or other company information
#9 Layouts with fixed width
#10 Photo enlargements that doesn't show the users the details they expect

Links:

• The article Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005

Henrik Olsen - October 03, 2005

See also: Forms (10)  Text (12)  Links (10)  Search (20)  Browsers (2) 

From a design perspective, creating a successful hotel reservation system can be one of the more complex user experiences.

Christine Perfetti (UIE) wrote about a Flash-based hotel reservation system that has recently caught attention: iHotelier.

It demonstrates how Flash-based applications can deliver users positive experiences, where HTML, DHTML and even sophisticated JavaScripting leave off.

Links:

• Read the Article
• The iHotelier Web Site
• Previous Posting about Using the Flash Potential

Pieter-Jan Pruuost - December 12, 2002

See also: Cases and Examples (12) 

Flash is a very powerful tool, but is of no added value if the designer does not master the tool or the medium. Macromedia has the Usability Guidelines you've been looking for. Designed for the 21st Century Flash Designer q;)

Links:

• Macromedia's Flash Usability Guidelines, Tips & Tricks, Examples, Cases, and Whitepapers

Pieter-Jan Pruuost - October 17, 2002

See also: Tips and guidelines (60) 

According to Christine Perfetti from UIE, Flash MX and its improved backend integration gives us the ability to build better and more sophisticated web applications.

Compared with HTML, Flash has the advantages of:
- Immediate responses to user interactions, without having to wait for new pages to load
- More sophisticated client-side interactions, such as drag-and-drop and zoom
- The ability to integrate a workflow in one visual display

In the article, Perfetti reviews some examples of product configuration applications build in Flash. You should also take a look at the BMW Virtual Center. Especially its model selection step, which would be very difficult to build in HTML without reloading all the time.

Links:

• The article Flash Strikes Back: Creating Powerful Web Applications
• BMW Virtual Center

Henrik Olsen - September 26, 2002

A white paper from User Interface Engineering (UIE) takes at look at how cutting-edge applications have demonstrated Flash's potential to surpass the power of traditional software applications. These web applications leverage the strengths of Flash to help users make better sense of large amounts of data, presenting information in an easily accessible, graphical visual representation.

Links:

• Download the white paper Macromedia Flash: A New Hope for Web Applications

Henrik Olsen - June 17, 2002

It's boring, it's nonsense, it's utterly useless, and it goes on and on...

Links:

• The Flash movie Skip Intro

Henrik Olsen - May 27, 2002

See also: Bad designs (7)