Smashing Magazine keeps pumping out these great articles! The 10 Principles are:

1. Don’t make users think
2. Don’t squander users’ patience
3. Manage to focus users’ attention
4. Strive for feature exposure
5. Make use of effective writing
6. Strive for simplicity
7. Don’t be afraid of the white space
8. Communicate effectively with a “visible language”
9. Conventions are our friends
10. Test early, test often

How many of these principles have you used? Check out the 10 Principles of Effective Web Design.

Bookmark this page now, go go go!

• 9 Essential Design Principles
• The Importance of White space
• 8 Design Tactics to Help You When You're Stuck
• 10 Great Website Redesigns of 2007
• The Open Source Web Design Toolbox: 100 Web Design Template Sources, Tools and Resources
• Top 100 Online Generators for Web 2.0
• 19 Things NOT to do When Building a Website
• Ultimate Web Development Cheat Sheet...

"Shopping Carts Gallery: Examples and Good Practices" on Smashing Magazine

“One of the simplest examples of flawed design decisions is the incorrect use of the shopping cart icon — a traditional icon which stands for the virtual holding place for any products of the store. Used properly, this little yet powerful element can help users to buy a product as quickly and painless as possible. As such, it is essential for the purchasing procedure and therefore deserves to be considered carefully during the design process.”

“An excellent website takes a particularly savvy blend of both great design and great code. Because of this, you often find designers having to figure out code and developers trying their hand at design. Speaking as a developer who spent his university years studying among other developers, I can safely say that programmers are not designers. Thankfully, we were graded back then for having reusable code and proper OO methodology -- never for our aesthetics. But nowadays, one of the greatest assets a developer can have is a keen understanding of design.”

Understanding Web Design is an essay written by The Zeldman. I believe it's a must-read for all aspiring web designers.

“Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.”

Check out what the websites of major corporations were like back in 1996 :)

On pepsi.com:

“Oh God. Oh dear God in heaven no. Your first instinct will be to repeatedly jab a pinecone in your eyes, but please try to understand Pepsi's mindset. First, they were almost definitely drunk. Secondly, they knew that the internet was in some way related to computers, so the idea was to make their website very evocative of a computer. I'm not convinced they understood what a computer was, but when they closed their eyes and thought about computers, this monstrosity is what popped into their drunken heads.”

Internet '96