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Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Dec 23, 2002 10:15 AM
from the how-many-did-you-have dept.
from the how-many-did-you-have dept.
yoey writes "Another famous Nielsen year-end wrapup: "Every year brings new mistakes. In 2002, several of the worst mistakes in Web design related to poor email integration. The number one mistake, however, was lack of pricing information, followed by overly literal search engines.""
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You know what I like? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You know what I like? (Score:3, Funny)
Bandwidth elves.
Numero Uno ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Number one: no website contact for links not working etc, ie American Express, etc.
Re:Numero Uno ... (Score:3, Informative)
The less technical a site is the less likly they will have something like this, the reason is that people will click on that and use that to complain about anything. The web people don't want to get customer support problems.
Grip session? (Score:3, Funny)
For everyone's sake, I hope you meant gripe session.
Re:Numero Uno ... (Score:5, Insightful)
A home page that is just a logo to click on to go to the real home page. It is often large, slow and adds nothing (good) to the experience
Number four
Flash
I used to feel the same way you do; actually, I still feel the same way you do. When I hit the net, it's usually because I am looking for something particular, and the more hoops/pluggins I have to jump through to get to it, the more unhappy I become.
When I talk to the people that use my site, on the other hand, I find that at least a good number of them like the "ooh, shiney" parts of the web. I've actually had people ask me to restore the flash intro that the guy who ran the site before me made.
I find that splash pages (the ones that link to the "real" hompage) act almost like the cover of a book. People process images much more uickly than they do written words, and a splash page allows you make a more reliable first impression than some other methods; and if you compress your images, there is no reason it should take more than a few seconds to load. A splash page, properly compressed, can come in at under 40k.
I think the hallmark of good design these days is to wrap functionality in a pretty package; make sure that your site is useful/useable, but also make it attractive enough that your users know you care about both your content and their experience.
Parent
And the #1 mistake of all times is ... (Score:5, Funny)
They missed websites that are just unnavigable (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They missed websites that are just unnavigable (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:They missed websites that are just unnavigable (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes indeed, quite annoying. Even more annoying to me is when you go to a site for information about a product, click on the "products" link, and are made to choose between "home", "small business", and "enterprise". I just want to see the products and their specs! Don't worry about why! Just tell me what you've got, and I'll make my own goddam decisions!
Sheesh.
- S
Parent
Re:They missed websites that are just unnavigable (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder how many sites with no site map actually don't even have a design map? I would venture quite a few. Web design is similar to software enginerring: without a good plan, you're gonna get crap out of the process.
Parent
They missed one... (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that some web designers use it almost like a crutch. As if some needless animation that I have to wait through is going to enhance my enjoyment of a website. If anything, it just makes me want to visit elsewhere.
Re:They missed one... (Score:3, Funny)
Flash, and
Animation is triply redundant.
Re:They missed one... (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed, but I would go further. Flash should be banned until there are useable free software implementations running in other platforms than Intel. I use testing Debian GNU/Linux PowerPC and Flash simply isn't useable for me.
I would also add:
Wrong Character Codification: MS Win-specific character codes, contents inconsistent with HTML declaration.
Fixed Linesize Text, too much header information: impossible to read in my Orange SPV Smartphone 2.002. Project Gutenberg is an offender.
Bad Use of Hyphens: character separation should use optional hyphens.
Content Proprietarily Encoded: MS WMA & Office, Real, recent versions of Apple Quicktime.
Re:They missed one... (Score:4, Insightful)
Wouldn't it be nice if web designers stopped dictating the size you need to run your browser? One designer tells me I'm supposed to run my browser at 800x600, another at 1024x768, and another at some oddball resolution. (Which tells me one thing: they're using the browser at full screen and I'd bet that it's on a Windows box as well.) A pox on all who don't use the ``width=NN%'' option on tables.
Parent
Re:They missed one... (Score:5, Informative)
The fact is, browsers are *still* not all behaving the same way, and the only safe way to have a site appear correctly is to use absolute pixels. Stylesheets are nice for simple text styling, but can't even be depended on for font sizes! (Don't believe me? Set up a web page with a style
BODY { font-size: medium }
And see how it shows up on IE, IE for Mac, Netscape, and Netscape for Mac. They'll all be different sizes, last time I checked.)
Since clients want pretty layouts, which includes, necessarily, the use of tables, from time to time absolute pixel widths have to be used.
Our technique for getting around the 100% of 800 = 805 problem is to set the table to 95% instead of 100%, and then center it on the screen. It also adds to the whitespace on the left and right, so it's actually a pretty good thing.
Parent
Web-Design Mistakes? That's easy... (Score:4, Funny)
Two words: Flash Intro
Yeah sure, it can be done right, but the other 99.9% of the time I hate the world.
Lack of pricing information (XBox Live site) (Score:5, Insightful)
Our kids are excited about XBox and want to play online, but after visiting the XBox Live site I'm not sure it's going to happen. I spent about 30 minutes poking around on the site and found no information on pricing. This annoys me. I'm not going to buy something to find out how much it will cost.
other mistakes (Score:5, Insightful)
Doug
Re:other mistakes (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:other mistakes (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
My gripe (Score:3, Insightful)
Web Standards? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also annoying when using a high res, small screen, as on a laptop, you crank up the font size in Mozilla or IE and the fixed size tables sites use to do layout make it impossible to read anything. ARGH!
Re:Web Standards? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Too many choices - too many standards (Score:3, Insightful)
So long as this wonderful environment of competition and choice exists, we will continue to enjoy sub-standard results.
/. almost fails the Number 9 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:/. almost fails the Number 9 (Score:5, Insightful)
Frex, your post's http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=48804&cid=494
Parent
Javascript in links and Flash animation (Score:5, Interesting)
I do a lot of web developing and I've come realize that a lot of things that I want to do cannot be done without having Javascript in the link. While it is sometimes annoying when I'm browsing a site and cannot directly link to a page because they use a POSTed form inside of a Javascript, there are many many positive uses for Javascript, such as history.go(-1).
Re:Javascript in links and Flash animation (Score:3, Interesting)
Tho the absolute most obnoxious links arrived shortly after DreamweaverMX -- where the entire menu is done as flash buttons. The way they're rigged, you can't even download the
Re:Javascript in links and Flash animation (Score:3, Insightful)
WTF is wrong with letting the user hit the back button?
Re:Javascript in links and Flash animation (Score:3, Interesting)
What's wrong with doing something like:
Click <a href="<? echo $HTTP_REFERER ?>">here</a> to go back
The above example is PHP, but applies equally well to whatever server-side scripting language you're using. Why force your users to enable JavaScript when there's no real need for it?
Re:Javascript in links and Flash animation (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems MUCH of javascript encourages CRAP web design. People are encouraged to do stupid things and then try to use javascript as a bandaid.
So many sites have javascript practically rewriting entire HTML pages.
Even history.go(-1) seems silly to me. Users aren't stupid - the back button is one of the first things they learn or are taught about when web browsing. Given all the various web technologies, can you give me a good reason why you would need history.go(-1), or any of the history stuff for that matter?
The other thing - you often can have javascript in the link, but still keep a usable href. I don't understand why so _many_ sites require javascript where a simple link will do. I hate this the most. Who cares about not having prices when the links don't even work? Or you can't even see anything on the first page.
Fortunately most sites that require Javascript (or Flash) for access are usually useless - filled with fluff or even lies.
Another thing, many sites that use javascript everywhere including forms appear to have been built by clueless idiots. There are often obvious web security problems with their sites. Easy SQL injection etc.
There are indeed good uses for Javascript, but sadly, excrement has been put to more good uses than Javascript.
Parent
Fixed text size? Only because M$ broke it (Score:5, Insightful)
<tag style="font-size:20px">
should do nothing more than render the font with that height, but still allow it to be resized, my website http://www.andrewvc.com uses this and using mozilla I can resize all the text perfectly.
Unfortuanatly, I just discovered that Internet Explorer 6 does not do and won't let me change the text size. Of what relevance is text in points to a web developer? As usual I expect all trolls to be bash me and tell me to use the standard. Well I don't care, no old people go to my site.
Re:Fixed text size? Only because M$ broke it (Score:4, Interesting)
I like using large fonts on high resolution; it looks nice. Small fonts are too small to read on my monitor.
(I'm 31 and have better than 20/20 eyes.)
Joe
Parent
Bigger Mistake (Score:4, Funny)
Good stuff but... (Score:3, Interesting)
But many other things in the article were bulls-eye, like the tiny text.
Ciryon
Web designers competence improves? (Score:4, Interesting)
'Poor email intergration' sounds pretty sophisticated compared to 'don't use the <blink> tag'.
browser type (Score:5, Interesting)
nothing quite as annoying as
"you need Internet Explorer 5+ or Netscape 6.2.2+ to view this site"
solution: some browsers allow you to change the userAgent.
in mozilla, the prefbar [xulplanet.com] plugin allows this (among other things).
a pet peeve (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, this is not the fault of stylesheets. Internet Explorer does not allow the "zooming" of fonts set with pixel sizes. This is a shortcoming of Internet Explorer, not CSS. If this is so important to Nielsen (and I can see why it would be - my vision isn't so great either), perhaps he should look into using alternative browsers (Opera and Moz-based browsers all allow font zooming regardless of how the font size was set).
Search Engines! (Score:3, Funny)
All Good, but, but, but (Score:3, Interesting)
Did you notice the alt tags on the Nielsen site? I've never seen another site put that much effort into a page.
Why users hate horizontal scrolling (Score:5, Insightful)
Reason why the site is slow... (Score:4, Informative)
As many people have mentioned, the site hosting this article is straining under the load of geeks looking for more material to turn into running gags. I think I managed to find the reason for this site's poor performance - a lack of high speed internet access.
From Nielsen's Law of Internet Bandwidth [useit.com] (1998):
Nielsen's Law of Internet bandwidth states that:
The dots in the diagram show the various speeds with which I have connected to the Net, from an early acoustic 300 bps modem in 1984 to an ISDN line today. It is amazing how closely the empirical data fits the exponential growth curve for the 50% annualized growth stated by Nielsen's Law.
Starting about 2003, high-end users will have speeds corresponding to a personal T-1 line.
Of course, low-end users will be on ISDN lines in 2003, so high-end users' megabit access will still not sanction bloated design. Looking even further ahead, Nielsen's Law does predict that the Web will be 57 times faster in ten years.
It is amazing how easy it is to get an accurate approximation of the trend of internet connectivity speed from seven data points representing one person's internet connection speed over a span of 15 years.
So the site might not be responding well right now, but at least we get broadband next year...
How about denying access to pop-up add blockers? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, I recognise this is how web sites make their money but a discreet advert in the corner of your site is much better than slamming a window in front of your site.
A polite slashdot? (Score:3, Insightful)
Looooooong URLs (Score:4, Interesting)
URL > 75 Characters Long URLs break the Web's social navigation because they make it virtually impossible to email a friend a recommendation to visit a Web page. If the URL is too long to show in the browser's address field, many users won't know how to select it. If the URL breaks across multiple lines in the email, most recipients won't know how to glue the pieces back together. The result? No viral marketing, just because your URLs are too long. Bad way to lose business.
There are two side points to this:
- To shorten your addresses and make your URLs more durable to change, point your links to www.foobar.com, NOT to www.foobar.com/default.htm (or index.jsp, or whatever).
- Don't invoke sessions unless absolutely needed. Sometimes these are in the URL, sometimes they are cookies. It is irritating to copy a URL, mail it to someone, and find that they can't access it because it is relying on a session which expired (in the case of a URL) or a session which their computer doesn't have (in the case of a cookie).
One kludge to get around massively long URLs is to use a service like ShortURL [shorturl.com]. Neat idea. But definitely a hack.Re:for those who dont wanna wait on the page to lo (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Last but not least... (Score:5, Insightful)
Jason.
Parent
Fornatted (Score:4, Informative)
Summary: Every year brings new mistakes. In 2002, several of the worst mistakes in Web design related to poor email integration. The number one mistake, however, was lack of pricing information, followed by overly literal search engines. As the Web grows, websites continue to come up with ways to annoy users. Following are ten design mistakes that were particularly good at punishing users and costing site owners business in 2002.
Parent
Re:No pricing... (Score:3, Funny)
Jeez! You mean the same guy who does the ads in the back of the stereo and camera magazines is now doing web pages? :-)
As for Veritas... I suspect the reason that they have no prices is that they'd just put you off wanting to use their software. Plus they probably will be flexible in the pricing anyway if they think that they could negotiate a little bit to get you to sign the license agreement. (Just watch out when they decide that the discount you originally got will no longer be available when it's time to renew the support agreement. And, of course, they've got you by the short hairs as it would be pretty disruptive to switch backup software.)