Nielsen on Mastery vs Mystery

In his latest alertbox Nielsen links to an earlier article where he has a go at the flash style of user interface that tries to turn the Web into TV.

At this point the Web vs TV battle seems to be definitively tipping towards the Web. Flash infested web sites are much less common than they were even a couple of years ago and where Flash is used it is generally used for things it is actually useful for: mostly games.

People still use javascript hyperlinks in places where plain old hyperlinks would work better. I hate this because it breaks the 'open page in new window' option.

The point Nielsen does not make, possibly because he did not spend so much time interacting with the appostles of Interactive TV as I did is that in the early days of the Web many people saw the Web as 'Interactive TV' done wrong, they saw their mission as correcting that mistake.