Found an excellent podcast from Usability Interface Engineering.

The podcast made three points that I found very compelling:

1. Flyout menus are horrible for user experience.
2. A web sites usability is determined by it's ease of use, not it's simplicity or complexity.
3. The front page layout is often best kept on the front page.  Other layouts should be designed according to the user's needs at a given place in the site.

 Great stuff.

by the way, I just read an awesome book on usability by Seth Godin.  Yes the link below is an affiliate, but you might be able to get it at your local library.  I did.  (Rember this is called the "Frugal Web Designer. "  :-) 

That said, I'm saving up for photoshop CS, so help me out get the book from Amazon.  

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