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I generally agree that websites should be simple. Website for me means that it’s a page that shows mostly static information and there is minimal or no interact

by enra 8y ago

I generally agree that websites should be simple. Website for me means that it’s a page that shows mostly static information and there is minimal or no interaction other than reading. For that I think having simple or event brutalist design works fine. But now, lot of “websites” are actually apps, where there are complex interactions, dynamic information, complex workflows and tools. I don’t think the same approach works anymore I don’t think anyone who complains about the complex or visual designs of web apps, complains that same way about their native or mobile apps. Do you really want your desktop windows to be all full screen boxes on white background, every action as a blue underlined link? Do you want your programming ide look this way? Do you want that every time you change a view in your apps there is a full page reload of the content? This is where the complex designs, react, animation, data and state management comes in to make the user experience more fluid, enjoyable, understandable, and hopefully meeting the needs of the users. There is some fair critisim that some or many websites are over designed and over engineered for various reasons. I also see that lot of the web frontend basics are now forgotten or ignored, you just create everything with JavaScript, and then spend half of the time trying fix or rebuild the functionality browsers provide with html out of the box.

repsilat 8y ago
Nobody complains about Google Docs being "an app". If a program like that doesn't have "normal scrolling" and a functional "back" button people will tend to forgive them. Most sites aren't that, though, even if their devs think they are. LinkedIn and Twitter and Reddit are just plain old boring mostly-static collections of pages. They might have a few good reasons to screw up their UI anyway, though: - They can attract devs who want on the bandwagon, - The "man on the street" might actually like crap like the Reddit redesign. Let's not blindly assume that our aesthetic preferences are shared by the public, even if they seem like a clear moral good to us (and especially if that moral intuition is informed by a technical background that is not widely shared.)
kungtotte 8y ago
The counter to that is, does everything really need to be an app? Take reddit for example, it was perfectly usable and in fact worked great when it was a static page without any JS going on. The current app-like "new reddit" is by comparison less usable and noticeably slower.
CM30 8y ago
Web apps ignoring these types of conventions are fine, but the key issue is that a lot of sites aren't web apps/don't need to be web apps yet are built like they are regardless. For example, your average news site. So many of them are built as single page applications with JavaScript frameworks like React or Angular, and for what purpose? None. At their core, they're basically blogs. They would work much better with traditional server side rendering and standard page loads and what not. Same with stuff like Reddit. At it's core, its just a set of forums, with the vote button and a few other minor aspects being the only thing that could possibly benefit from JavaScript. Same with Wikia, which seems to have forgotten its a wiki host and not an application platform. And the list goes on and on. Why? Probably because either the management team like to think they're 'on the forefront of web technology', ala Google or because the developers wish they were working for Google/Facebook/whatever. Many sites really are seriously overdesigned and over engineered.

by enra 8y ago

repsilat 8y ago

Nobody complains about Google Docs being "an app". If a program like that doesn't have "normal scrolling" and a functional "back" button people will tend to forgive them. Most sites aren't that, though, even if their devs think they are. LinkedIn and Twitter and Reddit are just plain old boring mostly-static collections of pages. They might have a few good reasons to screw up their UI anyway, though: - They can attract devs who want on the bandwagon, - The "man on the street" might actually like crap like the Reddit redesign. Let's not blindly assume that our aesthetic preferences are shared by the public, even if they seem like a clear moral good to us (and especially if that moral intuition is informed by a technical background that is not widely shared.)

kungtotte 8y ago

The counter to that is, does everything really need to be an app? Take reddit for example, it was perfectly usable and in fact worked great when it was a static page without any JS going on. The current app-like "new reddit" is by comparison less usable and noticeably slower.

CM30 8y ago

Web apps ignoring these types of conventions are fine, but the key issue is that a lot of sites aren't web apps/don't need to be web apps yet are built like they are regardless. For example, your average news site. So many of them are built as single page applications with JavaScript frameworks like React or Angular, and for what purpose? None. At their core, they're basically blogs. They would work much better with traditional server side rendering and standard page loads and what not. Same with stuff like Reddit. At it's core, its just a set of forums, with the vote button and a few other minor aspects being the only thing that could possibly benefit from JavaScript. Same with Wikia, which seems to have forgotten its a wiki host and not an application platform. And the list goes on and on. Why? Probably because either the management team like to think they're 'on the forefront of web technology', ala Google or because the developers wish they were working for Google/Facebook/whatever. Many sites really are seriously overdesigned and over engineered.