Durability of Usability Guidelines

"The usability field is getting on in age, and we now have the cumulative wisdom of more than twenty years of user research at our disposal. Some usability enemies like to dismiss established findings, claiming, 'they may have been true once, but not any more.' Because the computer field does tend to move quickly, it's reasonable to ask whether old usability insights have indeed become obsolete.
From 1984 to 1986, the U.S. Air Force compiled existing usability knowledge into a single, well-organized set of guidelines for its user interface designers. I was one of several people who advised the project (in a small way), and thus received a copy of the final 478-page book in August 1986.

The project identified 944 guidelines. This may seem like a lot, but it pales against the 1,277 guidelines for Web and intranet usability we've identified so far--and we're not done yet. "

Another good one from Alertbox ...