Actually I agree that Nielsen's site is less than perfect. Funny how usability critics aren't good designers. Don Norman's site is less than perfect too. I guess design criticism and creating good design are distinct skills.
Anyway, I did my own makeover of the page Design-by-Fire looked at. Pretty minimal changes, just a bit more space. Here's the original for comparison.
I would have put a link to it in a comment on the Design-by-Fire blog entry, but they turned off comments. And added me to their killfile.
Update 15 July 2004: DxF's put in a link to my design. (actually, he did it a while ago, sorry for the slow update)