Agreed. I despise it when sites pull my focus to another field when I"m already halfway through data entry. Same goes for apps - if I launch an app and then switch to something else, for God's sake don't pull me back when you're done loading. I wanted you in the background dammit.

It's also a bad idea generally to break the UI the user is accustomed to.

Tip #7 works if you put in a bit of extra effort, and make sure that the text field you're taking the focus away from hasn't been altered from its default value.

Yes, exactly. The subtleties are so dangerous that even Google gets it wrong (Google Images did this wrong, at least for a long time)

Gmail does this wrong when you add an attachment. After it has been uploaded the textarea cursor is moved to the bottom and you end up typing after your sig.

Definitely agree on your assessment. I started questioning this guy's advice after his bit on button spacing. Having the words in a button "balanced" within the button does not make it any more of less useful.

Intuitive, functional, and pretty aren't always the same thing. Having a pretty interface doesn't make it inherently usable.

The button tip makes sense if you align the button to other text. Then, the baseline of the text in the button should be aligned to the baseline of the text outside it (if both texts are of the same font-size.) If buttons center their text vertically, and themselves are centered with respect to the half-height of the smaller characters, this can misalign the text within them; playing with vertical padding can help with this.