Here are some oldies but goodies from the archives that may be new to you.
The Yellow Fade Technique: highlight changes without getting in someone’s way.
Epicenter Design: start from the inside out.
Context and Perspective: help people relate to objects they can’t touch.
and of course Ryan’s well traveled Introduction to Using Patterns in Web Design article.
Blog reruns?
Perhaps not re-runs but more like the "clip episodes" of the 90s where sitcoms would reminisce about previous episodes in the season.
That's how I see it ;) Great info though!
Regarding the Yellow Fade Technique, I wanted to respond to why using an animated gif with CSS would NOT work all the time, especially in IE.
http://dev2.bitwisesolutions.com/Bryan/background/
That itself, in IE, shows how it is slow and stalls IE.
Using JS would make the transitions much smoother
Another link of note is:
http://www.baekdal.com/articles/Usability/usable-XMLHttpRequest/
Implements an XMLHttpRequest example with many neat UI features. Below is a snipit from the link:
One thing I found from other tests is that people do not believe something is saved if it happens too quickly... Yes, you did read that right!
The first application I made using XMLHttpRequest saved the data whenever a field lost focus. It only took a 100th of a second. Most astoundingly none really believed that it was saved. They constantly reloaded the page to "make sure" - taking away all the benefits of using XMLHttpRequest.
So, we need to fake it - making the save process seem longer than it really is. In this example a delay is added + a visual indicator. It works much better and also functions as a confirmation that the application really did save your information.