Thank you for writing, progressive complexity is a great term. For my project, a web-based forum, I categorize UI controls as beginner or advanced, and hide th

Thank you for writing, progressive complexity is a great term. For my project, a web-based forum, I categorize UI controls as beginner or advanced, and hide the letter behind a setting. New users see only the essentials, intermediate users see both extra controls and hints, and expert mode takes the hints away. I've had overwhelming success with this technique in user studies, both with beginners doing register-comment-vote, and advanced users tasked with "vote against my vote on this item". The best part is how easy it is to layer the UI like this with HTML and DOM. My concept works in 10-year-old browsers and I believe I can extend suport even further!