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>Don't you think that would put too much responsibility on the end user who, after all, isn't usually a designer. I think we need to apply the usual application design criteria (about which we know rather a lot after all these years) to web interfaces.

I agree totally with you on this. I don't know if you've seen the new MS UI guidelines, but they now include Web guidelines. You can look at the book, "The Windows User Experience" from MS Press. It's also available on the MSDN Library Online.