Commentary on the original top 10 usability mistakes in web desing - prologue

When I wrote the commentary about top 10 blog usability mistakes I mentioned that blogs as specific type of web medium should follow the general web usability guidelines. So lets dig almost fifteen years into the past when first web usability guidelines were revealed to the then still young web developer and user community who was still exploring the possibilities of this new web environment. Many things were different back then and some of the usability issues and techniques have been long forgotten. But some of the usability issues are still valid today, so it is worthwhile to look at the genesis of web usability guidelines before moving on to newer web usability guidelines. So the next ten posts will again form an editorial commentary of the genesis of web usability, the list of original top 10 usability mistakes in web design by Jakob Nielsen (1996):

1. Using frames
2. Gratuitous use of bleeding-edge technology
3. Scrolling text, marquees and constantly running animations
4. Complex URLs
5. Orphan pages
6. Long scrolling pages
7. Lack of navigation support
8. Non-standard link colors
9. Outdated information
10. Overly long download times