Perhaps a bit late but I still wanted to comment on Nielson's articles.

Firstly, "Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design". While all of these things are good to keep in mind, as an internet user I am apt to agree with him most on the points of numbers 7-10. I make a rule to ignore anything that looks like and quack likes an ad. Consistency is key; he puts it nicely in his "Jakob's Law of the Web User Experience". People definitely get their own ideas of how things should work based on other sites. Another point, which harkens back to #7, opening new browser windows is crappy. :) It reminds me of those annoying netflix popups at almost every site I visit. And if I hadn't disabled the pop-up blocker on my work pc, I wouldn't even see these things. Besides since the amazing implementation of tabbed browsing, I don't need anyone opening up new windows on my computer, I know perfectly well how to do that on my own, thank you! :) Also, I HATE when I can't easily find information on a site. For example, I do data entry at my full time job (so exciting) and I need to verify addresses of clients, so I naturally go to their websites. There are more sites (all doctor's offices or clinical research sites) that have their location links/pages hidden or in an obsure location under some strange heading. (an interesting market to approach if anyone is looking to design sites, most are truly awful, but I digress).

In the article "Guidelines for Visualizing Links" I found a few points to be highly useful. Color is so important when making links. It's not something I would initially think about from a design prospective (except how it works with my ideas) but as a user it drives me nuts to see blue underlined text that is not a link or for that matter any text that is contrasting to the main text, especially in the body that is not a link. I find his point on making visited links a dull "used" shade of the unvisited link color very useful, a good way to denote a link, without commanding the presence of a new-to-the-user (unvisited) link.

As far as the "Breadcrumb Navigation Increasingly Useful" to put it shortly: I heart breadcrumbs! (of the hierarchal sort that is) I completly agree that historical breadcrumbs are repetitive to the the back button and history drop down of most browsers (and a bit redundant I might add!). I really think that breadcrumbs are so useful, especially when I'm at some site shopping (when I should probably be doing the above mentioned dataentry) and I utilize the search box and find my self in the middle of a site and don't know how to get back. The breadcrumbs allow me to show the page logic, how things are organized so I can use the site better next time without having to search again, maybe I'll find something else I didn't know I couldn't live without!

I like Neilson's writing style, blunt and unflowered. I chuckled throughout the articles as I recalled many a venture into the internet unknown.

Top Ten
Link Visualization
Breadcrumbs