Articles on some effective newer UI techniques

Mega Drop-Down Menus - which get a big thumbs-up from Jakob Nielsen. He likens them to the ribbon found in the latest version of MS-Office.



Contextual User-Interfaces. Chris Mahon gives some examples. They let the user perform relevant actions without having to shift context. And as the user performs actions, the UI is dynamically modified to take this new context into account, so the user can perform tasks more quickly and easily.

And while I'm here I'll give another plug to Bret Victor's visionary -- and still very relevant -- paper Magic Ink: Information Software and the Graphical Interface.