Throughout my years as a UX resource I have relied heavily on a very common UI design pattern, Module Tabs. Found this article on best practices to consider and real-world examples. Most are common sense but you would be amazed how many are not followed.

" A module tab is a User Interface (UI) design patternwhere content is separated into different panes, and each pane isviewable one at a time. The user requests content to be displayed byclicking (or in some instances hovering over) the content’scorresponding tab control.

Module tabs are seeing an increase of use as websites and webapplications push for optimizing web page screen areas withoutsacrificing the amount of information presented at once. For example,in weblogs,  they are used in secondary content sections (such as thesidebar) to present relevant and interesting information such as alisting of blog posts which users can interact with to get to web pagesquicker. This inevitably allows for an unobtrusive and compact mannerof presenting content."

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As much as we, as UX professionals, always want to come up with a new and cutting-edge interaction, there is much to be said for following current design patterns. Users are trained in a particular interaction, and often it has been tested and proven to be a positive solution. Here is a list of sites devoted to sharing information and exploring concepts pertaining to UI design patterns.

40+ Helpful Resources on User Interface Design Patterns

Great resource for new UI elements such as Modal windos, live search and hover effects.

"There are plenty of perfectly acceptable and functional websites outthere that don’t use dynamic content. But what if you want to give yoursite that little something extra that makes your visitors say “Wow”?What then?"

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I want this...

"Looks like the netbook is no longer the immature, dim-witted cousin of the grown-up laptop: Sharp's new Mebius netbook is so shiny and clever it outclasses many "superior" machines. It's got a multi-touch LCD where its tiny, inefficient "netbook class" trackpad should be.

The rest of the Mebius NJ70A is recognizably a netbook: It runs an Intel N270 Atom CPU, has a 10.1-inch main display, Mobile Intel 945GSE Express chipset for video handling, Bluetooth 2.1, Wi-Fi b&g, a memory-card reader slot, 1GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive. It runs Windows Vista Home Basic, is just 1.46kg in weight and its battery is stated to last three hours.  

But the trackpad is the true winner in this design. it's a 4-inch LED-backlit LCD with 854 x 480 pixels, so it's actually a bit like having an iPhone where a normal trackpad should be. Only better, since that device has just 3.5 inches of 480 x 320 pixels on its screen. The pad is both touch-sensitive, and stylus-sensitive, so as well as using it as a mere pointer-control device you can prod at it to operate the buttons of a virtual calculator, for example. Or write on it, and have your handwriting automatically recognized, draw on it for artistic purposes, or use it to annotate word-processed files in good old-fashioned "traditional" editing notes-style. In fact, it's hard to come up with suggestions for how this tech could be utilized, since so many that leap to mind"

Cool tool to make either illustrated or pencil iPhone screen mockups or wireframes.

http://iphonemockup.lkmc.ch/

Recently, the IxDA list has been discussing a couple of commercials that Ford is running. One of them is focused on UI Design. Check it out...

Watch Commercial

I'm not normally one for Flash interfaces with "different" navigation techniques, but I thought this was impressive, smooth and relatively usable:

http://www.whitevoid.com/application.html

One of my first posts discussed how anything to the extreme is not a good thing. I came across a comment today that really drove me crazy and reminded me of this past post.

"I can only say that getting a Mac Book will make you a better designer - and a better person."

I want to know how the type of computer I use will make me a better person. Wow, some people need to get a clue.

Dispite it's sometimes sluggish performance, here is another great distance whiteboarding tool.

http://www.twiddla.com/