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Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002 547

Posted by Hemos 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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Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002 More

Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002

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  • And in 1992... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    And in 1992 the winner of this award would have gotten it for having a plain website, because blink tags were oh so cool...

  • You know what I like? (Score:5, Funny)

    by ZoneGray ( 168419 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:21AM (#4944401) Homepage
    You know what's a nice usability feature? A server that can handle the load. You click on the link, the page loads. Nielsen should get one of them.

  • Numero Uno ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by airrage ( 514164 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:21AM (#4944403) Homepage Journal
    I know this entire thread will probably turn into some sort of grip session, so I'll just throw the first volley:

    Number one: no website contact for links not working etc, ie American Express, etc.

    • Re:Numero Uno ... (Score:3, Informative)

      by will_die ( 586523 )
      This is deliberate and not likly to change.
      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.
    • That sounds sort of dirty.

      For everyone's sake, I hope you meant gripe session.


    • Ugh. IFYP. How about web sites with NO PHONE NUMBERS on their lame-ass "Contact Us" page. (no, the answer *wasn't* in the stupid FAQ.)

      NOTE: By the way, **mad** props to Neilson for pointing out how really horrible some of the commercial FAQs are. I hadn't even elucidated that fact until I read his piece.

    • Speaking of American Express...we use their banking and have been pretty happy with it...even when they did an internal revamp but removed the ability to tag your accounts with individual one line comments, so you could tell which was which (shared savings, private checking, etc) But our *favorite* gripe is how the "logout" button doesn't end your session...it takes you to a "thank you for using AmEx banking" screen, and you have to click "Done" or something there to actually log out. If you just close the window on the "reverse splash page", your session still hangs around. Duhhr!

  • And the #1 mistake of all times is ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by oblom ( 105 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:22AM (#4944404) Homepage
    Forgetting to prepare server for /. effect

  • They missed websites that are just unnavigable (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mothra the III ( 631161 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:22AM (#4944406)
    Its incredibly frustrating to have to roam a site for several minutes to be able to find what you are looking for. Is it that much trouble to put together a good site map and link to it from the home page?

    • Re:They missed websites that are just unnavigable (Score:5, Funny)

      by archeopterix ( 594938 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:31AM (#4944470) Journal
      You have no spirit of adventure. Suppose that I hit a toaster manufacturer page looking for some technical data on a toaster. It is a very thrilling experience to click the "products" link and have to choose between "wooden products", "red&yellowish products", "other products", "products other than all of the above" and "guess where this link will take you". The products->toasters->specific model path is just boring when compared to that.

      • Re:They missed websites that are just unnavigable (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        "wooden products", "red&yellowish products", "other products", "products other than all of the above" and "guess where this link will take you"

        A tactit commenly employed is to group products by the model name. This is especially effective if the name is Scandinavian, or Swahili. Trying to find the toaster you saw in the store yesterday when the choices are "Knopox", "Ikbaan", "Fnafbert" and "Aaaaaaarghbaad" is definatly a good way to enduce a seizure in your users.
        • At this point I would suggest writing down the name of the aforementioned toaster while in the aforementioned store. The psychic plugin for mozilla is on the way but not yet available. Until then customers who are searching for something are advised to have reasonable search terms.
          • At this point I would suggest writing down the name of the aforementioned toaster while in the aforementioned store. The psychic plugin for mozilla is on the way but not yet available. Until then customers who are searching for something are advised to have reasonable search terms.

            Okay,

            I'd put you on my enemies list but I'm feeling nice today.

            The point of a website is to allow users to find information, it shouldn't force the customer to educate themselves about the product before going to the website. That does make sense if you're talking about specialized products and a specialized audience, but these are toaster buyers here.

            When I go to a website, I don't give a flying #*$ about their company. I care about what they offer, in terms of products and services. So I don't care about their neat branding techniques, their logos, or their corporate structure.

            How about this for a Toaster search:

            Number of Slots: [1:2:4:8]
            Slot Size [ Wide | Narrow ]
            Style [ Retro Chrome | etc...]

            The point is that unless the person really is a complete moron, they can answer the above questions about a toaster they just bought without having to look at the toaster or the box it came in. Model names and numbers are often difficult to find on products, and it's also sometimes difficult to figure out which brand name represents the company and which brand name represents the product, and which number is the model number vs. the serial number vs. etc, etc.

            I develop websites myself, and so I know how difficult it can be to setup useful navigation and search engines. However, your attitude is customer-hostile. You want customers to find the product, even if they can't remember any "key" data (i.e. the product number, the model name, the brand, etc.). That's why record stores are cooler than CDNow. You can walk in and say, "What's that song that goes 'Na na na na na something something blues?'" and they may be actually able to help you. Of course, web sites will *never* be that intuitive, but you can certainly make it as easy as possible to find something.

        • Re:They missed websites that are just unnavigable (Score:5, Insightful)

          by sgage ( 109086 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @11:34AM (#4944816)
          "A tactit commenly employed is to group products by the model name"

          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

    • Re:They missed websites that are just unnavigable (Score:5, Interesting)

      by parc ( 25467 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @11:49AM (#4944932)
      My wife works for a not-to-be-named textbook company. Their online companion to one of their books was getting incredibly poor remarks. She was in a group working on the problem, so she asked to see the site map. The answer from the web-design group was "site map? We don't have one." So she clarified that she was talking about a design site map. They didn't have one of those, either.

      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.

  • They missed one... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by misfit13b ( 572861 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:23AM (#4944412)
    Too Much Flash Animation

    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:2, Interesting)

      by SilkBD ( 533537 )
      I agree, the #2 mistake should be flash (#1 would be auto pop-ups/unders)... use of it in any way other than a brief intro that can be skipped.

      Flash pisses me off because it takes away functionality from my browser...

    • Too Much Flash Animation

      Yeah, well as I recall, Nielsen was hired not too long ago in an advisory capacity by Macromedia. Apparently the latest version is far more accessible & usable.

      Did anybody else automatically try to scroll right when they got to #3? Also, the bit:

      For some reason, many websites seem to be optimized for 805-pixel-wide browser windows

      Anybody else wanna bet that the sites in question are actually designed for 800 pixels wide, but it's Internet Explorer screwing up the box model?

      • Re:They missed one... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by rnturn ( 11092 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @11:24AM (#4944741)
        ``For some reason, many websites seem to be optimized for 805-pixel-wide...''

        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.

    • Too Much,
      Flash, and
      Animation is triply redundant.

    • Re:They missed one... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      This is main current gripe with Nielsen. In the past his stance against Flash has made most of his other oversights tolerable. The fact is that Flash is almost always primarily used for 1)useless intros and 2) advertising. While I think his foray into flash usability is commendable, I think his association with Flash is a deal with the force of web unsuitability, and ultimately threatens his credibility.

      I do not run flash on my main browser. I do not like to upgrade browser software because it will generally include flash. I have seen good uses of flash. I have more often seen gratuitous uses that stifle the visitor.

    • Seems to me, that there is less Flash being used for content and more being used for banner ads. It could also be the selection of sites that I visit, though.

    • Re:They missed one... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by leandrod ( 17766 )

      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.

  • He's had his 15 minutes.

  • Web-Design Mistakes? That's easy... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Draigon ( 172034 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:24AM (#4944425) Homepage
    One word: Flash.
    Two words: Flash Intro

    Yeah sure, it can be done right, but the other 99.9% of the time I hate the world.
  • Getting your site linked to on the front page of /.

  • Lack of pricing information (XBox Live site) (Score:5, Insightful)

    by davie ( 191 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:28AM (#4944448) Journal

    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.

    • http://news.com.com/2100-1040-918460.html [com.com] has the price.

      Quoth the article:

      "Microsoft will sell a $49.95 Xbox Live package, O'Rourke said, which includes a 12-month subscription to the service and a headset microphone that connects to the Xbox for voice chat. The fee does not include a broadband connection, which is required to subscribe."

      Google is our friend (I simply searched using 'XBox Live price' as the string).

      Also, http://www.xbox.com/live/xboxlive-retailers.htm [xbox.com] shows where you can get the starter kit from your favorite local (nationwide) retailer.

      If you go to the main XBox live page, there's a link on the page under 'Get it now!' that lists the price.
      • Yes but his point was valid that that information should be presented more clearly on the official XBox Live site, you shouldn't have to resort to googling for external information to get vital product information.
        • Agreed, but if you look at my comments where I say

          "If you go to the main XBox live page, there's a link on the page under 'Get it now!' that lists the price."

          You'd see that I also pointed out that the information was readily available on the XBox Live front page.

          No big deal. If you can't find it, Google should be your first stop - that was my only reason for referencing it.

  • other mistakes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dkone ( 457398 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:28AM (#4944449)
    lack of real world contact info. sometimes a phone call is required.

    Doug
    • My guess (strictly a guess) is that companies that do not provide such info don't have the personnel capable of dealing with that many calls.

      You could always search the yellow pages (or your area's equivalent) for their number. If they do not have one listed, you might want to question the quality and capabilities of that company anyway.

    • Re:other mistakes (Score:3, Insightful)

      by micromoog ( 206608 )
      This is not an oversight in most cases. Incoming phone calls are WAY more expensive than page views or incoming email.

    • Re:other mistakes (Score:4, Insightful)

      by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @11:12AM (#4944700) Homepage
      Peeve: Companies that post jobs on their site, but don't provide a street address so you can figure out if it's possible to actually get there if you ever get an interview. I guess they want you to look up their domain registration in whois to prove your L337 skills.

  • My gripe (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Microsift ( 223381 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:28AM (#4944452)
    Having to enter my email address twice.

  • Web Standards? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:29AM (#4944457)
    How about sites that code for IE only, and won't display anything, or broken tables, or text layered on top of other text..

    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)

      by principio ( 558251 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:32AM (#4944485) Journal
      I could not agree more. Although I have always found it more amusing when companies that sell products for the Macintosh have web sites that cannot be viewed from a Mac. Like it would have been that hard to test.
    • Argh, yes... and that exacerbated by validators that insist that all tables have a fixed size. Even forcing percentage of the screen is sometimes a problem. Myself, I mostly leave table sizing alone so they size-adjust on their own, and if it takes a few seconds for the brower to render, well, that's better than rendering all wonky.

  • Too many choices - too many standards (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bushboy ( 112290 ) <lttc@lefthandedmonkeys.org> on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:29AM (#4944458) Homepage
    As usual, in 2002, we had too many conflicting standards and choices.

    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)

    by burgburgburg ( 574866 ) <splisken06.email@com> on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:32AM (#4944480)
    The URL for this article has 70 characters, which is less then the 75 mentioned in mistake number 9. Of course, the post comment page is 109 characters, so I won't be giving it out to anyone over the phone very soon.

    • Re:/. almost fails the Number 9 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Reziac ( 43301 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:59AM (#4944667) Homepage Journal
      If you need to voice-quote some obnoxiously long URL, check out tinyurl.com -- it converts long URLs into short temporary URLs.

      Frex, your post's http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=48804&cid=4944 480 becomes http://tinyurl.com/3s1j

    • I will jump to defend /. here. The essential URL for the article is 'http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/23/13924 3'. This is long but not complicated. It has no random sequence of characters. It is simple URL for anyone familiar with address conventions, and only slightly more complicated for the average user.

      There is no way that this is an unusable URL.

  • Javascript in links and Flash animation (Score:5, Interesting)

    by phylus ( 468215 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:32AM (#4944482)
    I think we should be much more worried about the trend in using flash for everything. I've seen sites that have whole link bars, with no special effects that warrant it, done in flash. Isn't that' what an href is for?

    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).
    • I think flash is being used so much because of the filesize of the flash files. You can have an entire menu bar in flash that's about 1/4 the size of gif/jpeg. This is very useful for people paying per MB for bandwidth.
    • But your links that require js lock out everyone who has js turned off -- acto WebTechniques magazine (now NewArchitect), that's some 30% of users and growing -- including folks behind corp firewalls that strip js, so the user has no choice. At the very least, be kind enough to give us plain links somewhere on the same page!!

      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 .swf and extract the URL by hand, plus there's nothing useful in docsource.

    • ...there are many many positive uses for Javascript, such as history.go(-1).


      WTF is wrong with letting the user hit the back button?
      • ``WTF is wrong with letting the user hit the back button?''

        Well, nothing except that they've already commandeered the Back button to pop up/under more ads when the hapless user tries to use it.

    • Whole link bars? I can top that!

      I've seen whole sites rendered as a single Flash application. The worst perpetrator,IME, is Celebrity Boulevard. These people seem to have an in with a lot of talent agencies to produce the 'Official' web site for the celebs on their books. Basically they get a few photos of the celeb (usually olds publicity shots and maybe a magazine shot or two) and stick them plus a few chunks of text (basic bio + film/discography) into a Flash app and pocket a fat cheque from the agency.

      Guess it's quicker than writing a real site.

      On can only hope that with the rumoured aquisition of Macromedia by Micro$oft [slashdot.org] these people will stop getting the traffic and so stop getting the business.

      Stephen

    • Re:Javascript in links and Flash animation (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TheLink ( 130905 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @11:41AM (#4944860) Journal
      In my experience javascript has rarely been used positively.

      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.

  • Fixed text size? Only because M$ broke it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by metalhed77 ( 250273 ) <andrewvcNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:34AM (#4944498) Homepage
    Hmmm, that should be a hard one to do, because a
    <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.

  • Bigger Mistake (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:35AM (#4944501)
    Not letting people post their extremely witty comments anonymously so they can not look like an ass with their fake name attached to it.

  • My Worst One (Score:2, Insightful)

    by md81544 ( 619625 )
    I don't know whether any other /.ers have this reaction, but WHITE text on a BLACK background makes me want to puke (quite literally) after I've been reading it for a couple minutes. Black on white (or at least dark on light) is the only way to go as far as I'm concerned.

    • Re:My Worst One (Score:2, Insightful)

      by zomB1kenoB ( 629547 )
      I agree about White on Black, which is why I prefer Gray or Blue on Black. It's the high contrast that makes the eyes bug. But I just can't look at a bright white screen very long before I start to feel my eyes starting to melt. I'm going blind right now, as I continue to stare at slashdot for hours on end.
    • I don't know whether any other /.ers have this reaction, but WHITE text on a BLACK background makes me want to puke (quite literally)
      You might want to check your eyesight. Bright background makes your pupils constrict, this can correct some forms of lighter astigmatism.

  • How to make a website (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail51.html

  • The browser's fault? (Score:2, Informative)

    by akintayo ( 17599 )
    "9. 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. "

    This problem does not exist on Navigator where you can just "Send Page". Seems more a limitation of the chosen browser, Internet Explorer, than of the website.
    • But human-friendly URLs are important for many other purposes. Don't you find that if a URL is short eg www.google.com/linux that its generally less likely to change eg http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-fo rm/104-7688696-0030307 When a URL is short and constant you can send them to friends, bookmark them, wow even link to them.

      So bascially he's saying - lets keep the web... the web.

  • Good stuff but... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ciryon ( 218518 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:40AM (#4944541) Journal
    a good thing would be to mention cross-platform and browser compatibility. Don't use Microsoft's arbitrary closed extensions. Make sure that the page validates as W3C code, or at least almost does it.

    But many other things in the article were bulls-eye, like the tiny text.

    Ciryon

  • Web designers competence improves? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by varjag ( 415848 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:47AM (#4944584)
    At least if we take the common design mistakes as the metric.

    'Poor email intergration' sounds pretty sophisticated compared to 'don't use the <blink> tag'.

  • browser type (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Khopesh ( 112447 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:48AM (#4944590) Homepage Journal
    how about sites that think mozilla can't render something?
    nothing quite as annoying as
    "you need Internet Explorer 5+ or Netscape 6.2.2+ to view this site"
    ...especially when mozilla 1.3a gets blocked but netscape 6.2.2 doesn't!

    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)

    by mmcshane ( 155414 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:51AM (#4944607)
    Fixed Font Size Style sheets unfortunately give websites the power to disable a Web browser's "change font size" button and specify a fixed font size. About 95% of the time, this fixed size is tiny, reducing readability significantly for most people over the age of 40. Respect the user's preferences and let them resize text as needed. Also, specify font sizes in relative terms -- not as an absolute number of pixels.

    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).

  • Why Frames Suck (Score:2, Interesting)

    by igbrown ( 79452 )
    These days I find fewer and fewer public and commercial websites that are relying on framesets for layout and navigation. IMHO, this is a good thing. However, I have noticed that a large number of web-based interfaces for commercial, enterprise-oriented applications, as well as many internal enterprise websites/web-applications, tend to rely very heavily on framesets.

    I would like to see Nielsen revisit his 1996 critique of frames [useit.com], perhaps exploring some of the technologies (PHP, JSP, ASP etc.*) that have provided better solutions to the problems frames initially tried to correct (dynamic navigation/content, rich GUI interface, etc.).

    * While dynamic, server-generated content was around in 1996 (cgi, ssi, and shtml), it was not as widespread, nor was it as readily available to the average web-designer/developer.
  • Fix These

    4. Fixed Font Size
    Sorry buddy. Get a REAL Browser, with full page zooming, not just silly text zooming. Opera [opera.com]

    9. URL > 75 Characters
    Not even realistic, we're past little html pages now, it's something called dynamic content. and without HTTP_GET you will be forced to fill out a form of where you would like to go (Think Web Application, Web Application...).

    10. Mailto Links in Unexpected Locations
    Tell the damned user to look at their STATUS BAR.

    Add These

    FLASH Navigation
    FRAMES
    REALLY BIG ADVERTISEMENTS
    POP UP/UNDER/SIDEWAYS/THROUGH/OVER/AROUND... ADS
    INEFFECTIVE (read: STUPID) use of COOKIES

  • Search Engines! (Score:3, Funny)

    by PhoenxHwk ( 254106 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @10:57AM (#4944652) Homepage
    How about search engines that ignore words of 3 characters or less? ;)

  • Previous entries (Score:2, Insightful)

    by 91degrees ( 207121 )
    It's interesting to compare the previous versions (linked below the main article here [useit.com] and here [useit.com]

    I particularly liked: 1999:

    Slow Server Response Times

    "Slow response times are the worst offender against Web usability: in my survey of the original "top-ten" mistakes, major sites had a truly horrifying 84% violation score with respect to the response time rule."

    Took me a couple of minutes for that to download

    In 1996, we had Overly Long Download Times

    The previous version are Cached by google,
    http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cache:pj5FFl38-pE C:www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 [google.co.uk]
    http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cache:tgqi1bumb78 C:www.useit.com/alertbox/990530.html+&hl=en&ie=UTF -8 [google.co.uk]

  • Given the asswhupping this server just took, they might change the site's name to abuseit.com.

  • All Good, but, but, but (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @11:33AM (#4944809) Homepage Journal
    It seems like most web sites feel like they have to annoy you with their obnoxious design. Corporate internal web sites often seem to be the worst offenders, too. It seems like the last thing a company is going to do is spend a few bucks for a usability person to go over the design of the web pages with them.

    Did you notice the alt tags on the Nielsen site? I've never seen another site put that much effort into a page.

  • What year was "annoying sound loops that you can't shut off" the #1 web design mistake?
    (not that that site has it, its just the worst thing I get on the web...oh, that and the sites that make browsers crash...)

  • Why users hate horizontal scrolling (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tim Macinta ( 1052 ) <twm@alum.mit.edu> on Monday December 23, 2002 @11:40AM (#4944851) Homepage
    3. Horizontal Scrolling
    Users hate scrolling left to right. Vertical scrolling seems to be okay, maybe because it's much more common.
    Or how about because horizontal scrolling forces you to scroll once for every line you read while vertical scrolling only forces you to scroll once for every page you want to read? So, there's generally more than an order of mangitude less scrolling required with vertical scrolling than with horizontal scrolling.

  • Reason why the site is slow... (Score:4, Informative)

    by mttlg ( 174815 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @11:40AM (#4944852) Homepage Journal

    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:

    • a high-end user's connection speed grows by 50% per year
    • you don't get to use this added bandwidth to make your Web pages larger until 2003

    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)

    by Zerbey ( 15536 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @11:44AM (#4944881) Homepage Journal
    Having to enable pop-up adds in Mozilla is a big pain for those websites that refuse to load unless I do so. Fortunately, it is only a very small number of web site thus far.

    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)

    by Peter_Pork ( 627313 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @11:53AM (#4944964)
    It's time for /. to be more polite. You should tell web server administrators that they are going to get x100 load increase, at least a couple of hours ahead of time, so they can try to do something. This will benefit slashdotter (increasing the chances of accessing the web sites featured in the stories), and administrators, that will be able to simplify their sites, or at least know what hit them. And no, hiding the hand is not a good policy.

  • Looooooong URLs (Score:4, Interesting)

    by FTL ( 112112 ) <slashdot&neil,fraser,name> on Monday December 23, 2002 @12:04PM (#4945067) Homepage
    From the (slashdotted) article:
    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:

    1. 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).
    2. 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:Looooooong URLs (Score:3, Insightful)

      by JimDabell ( 42870 )
      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).

      This will also increase the chances of a cache hit, speeding up access to your site, reducing server load and bandwidth bills.

      Don't invoke sessions unless absolutely needed.

      Ditto. Nasty URLs can usually be made at least a little nicer with judicious use of mod_rewrite (so instead of something like http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1234&pid=5 678 turns into http://slashdot.org/stories/1234/comments/5678 (also a help for search engines, as well as humans)

  • Radio buttons and their dumbness (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lord Bitman ( 95493 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @12:44PM (#4945403)
    Not one place can you go where you need to click the small circle of a radio button rather than the option next to it. I'm sure somebody has noticed this. Not one place in any GUI anywhere must you click a status indicator rather than the option you wish to choose. Look around your desktop, look for radio buttons, and click next to them. Nobody ever does it any differently because it is the most convenient and logical way to make it work. Nobody except Every Page On The Net Anywhere.
    And I think it's just plain stupid. People, please, do this:
    function setopt(form,opt,i) {
    eval('var opt = document.' + form + '.' + opt + '[' + i + '];');
    opt.click();
    }
    and stick an a onlick= around your options. It's fast, it's easy, it doesnt add much clutter, and it's more widely supported than label tags. It is very annoying to have to click NOT what I want, but some tiny thing next to what I want, in order to get the option I want. I dont see why this setopt() practice isnt used on many more websites. I'd think at least /. would realize how stupid it is to have to click on some tiny thing next to their poll option, but maybe they havent noticed that the web is the only place they ever have to do that. Maybe they just dont use any other program with radio options. Maybe they never even open their browser's preference window. Come on, people! Am I missing something here? Just add ONE EXTRA ANCHOR around your option, and usability increases suddenly becomes much more comfortable.

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