Commentary on the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design - gratuitous use of bleeding-edge technology

Gratuitous use of bleeding-edge technology is the second mistake in the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design list by Jakob Nielsen (1996). Have you ever loaded a webpage to look at something and had to stop to wait until some Java applet has loaded? And all that wait to load an applet that displays some scrolling text, plays some background music or displays a slideshow you didn't want to see in the first place. Or maybe the site has buttons and menus made in Flash and since you have long time ago installed a flashblocker to weed out all those flashy ads from websited, you have to click the Flash content open one by one to find means for navigation in the site... for every page you load in that site! New bleeding-edge technology come and go, but this mistake remains. Just because you can put some fancy new gimmick to your site doesn't mean you should put it there. Bleeding-edge technology that only looks nice (or maybe it doesn't) and fancy but that distracts, or in worst case hinders the user from enjoying the main content of the site doesn't have any right of being in the site in the first place. Use the bleeding-edge technology when and where it provides some additional value to the users, but don't use it just as means of decoration.