During that same period, we were building up the concept of UX and one of the things drilled into people's heads was that 9 times out of 10 (at least), what you are doing is not so unique that you deserve to use a new UI metaphor to present it.
When in doubt, use the same mechanisms to accomplish things that everybody else uses.
That sort of peer pressure is intended to reduce the variability between web sites. I think for better or worse we are seeing the dividends of that effort.
More on-topic, you're totally right. I keep a copy of "Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines" on my desk and show it to designers sometimes when they want to suggest interaction patterns that are unnecessarily novel. Very handy! haha :)
Wow, have you looked up the price of that book now? I don't know what it originally sold at, but today it's $248 and up. You can get the PDF for free, but if you want a hardcopy to keep on your desk, it's not cheap.
Huh for sure? I could see it on Amazon around $20-40. But yeah I got pretty lucky, cost me $5 or $10 or something along with some other Mac programming books from that era. Aww yeah :)
When in doubt, use the same mechanisms to accomplish things that everybody else uses.
That sort of peer pressure is intended to reduce the variability between web sites. I think for better or worse we are seeing the dividends of that effort.