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I don't think it is just that. Google is just shockingly bad at web frontend. All their properties are terrible, except maybe Youtube which I find quite agreeab

I don't think it is just that. Google is just shockingly bad at web frontend. All their properties are terrible, except maybe Youtube which I find quite agreeable. For example I just made a search on google.com, the most popular website in the world, and it can't even fit the content into this reasonably sized window [1]. [1] https://i.imgur.com/ER5yfbd.png https://i.imgur.com/ER5yfbd.png

sorenjan 6y ago
Which large companies aren't bad at web frontend? UX seems to always be far down on the list or priorities for modern websites.
- ubercow13 6y ago
  I find Github and Amazon's main site to be pretty reasonable in comparison.
  - v7p1Qbt1im 6y ago
    As someone who regularly uses other e-commerce front ends, I find Amazon to be quite cluttered and messy. Also it‘s surprisingly difficult to quickly find a specific product.
    - Isthatablackgsd 6y ago
      I felt the same way with Amazon. Before then it was easy to navigate and finding the product that I want to buy. Now, I couldn't navigate it well like I did in the past. And asian-sounding names products took over first few pages of result which made it difficult to filter out. And they are crap quality products. It is easily to tell which products is made in. Hint the brand name is all capitalized.
    - 295310e0 6y ago
      I am simply happy that Amazon has not embraced the ridiculous trend of low-information density with large amounts of whitespace. Give me a cluttered UI that has everything available any day.
      - systemvoltage 6y ago
        Totally. Cmd+F FTW, if you wanna search.
    - ubercore 6y ago
      One pet peeve I have is getting to prime video. They own primevideo.com, but it just tells you to watch on Amazon. It's also the first result when you search (on google) for amazon prime video. There's no direct url to get it (afaik).
      - zerocrates 6y ago
        amazon.com/primevideo and amazon.com/video both go there. The situation with primevideo.com is strange, but it seems to have something to do with non-US territories?
        ATB 6y ago
        PrimeVideo.com is the website (in addition to apps on mobile and living room devices like TVs and consoles) where customers outside of the US, UK, Germany, and Japan can watch Prime Video. In the aforementioned four countries, customers can watch Prime Video directly on their amazon.* retail website instead.
        ubercore 6y ago
        Thanks, I had no idea!
  - citrus1330 6y ago
    Really? Criticizing Google's frontends but praising GitHub and Amazon? If I had to pick a large tech company with a bad frontend Amazon would be top of the list. GitHub is not great either. I guess this kind of thing is just subjective though.
    - simonw 6y ago
      What do you find lacking about GitHub's frontend?
      - cstrahan 6y ago
        For one, they're using some sort of link / browser history hijacking (something like https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks, IIRC) which is buggy, for example: * say you're on page A * navigate to page B * navigate to page C * click your browser's back button, hoping to be back at page B * the github UI screws up and keeps you on the same page while changing the URL in the address bar * so you click back again * now your on page A, completely skipping page B * clicking forward takes you back to C Additionally, GitHub is insanely slow. This page, for example, takes 3 seconds to load: https://github.com/Boemska/create-sas-app/commit/85224fe66223cff69c7a34599f10e25bb697f300 https://github.com/Boemska/create-sas-app/commit/85224fe6622... Couple broken history back/forward navigation with long page load times and GitHub is easily one of the most frustrating web sites to use. Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing that GitHub doesn't have value -- it most certainly does -- but that doesn't excuse bugginess and absurdly long page load times. If they fixed these problems it would be 100% awesome.
        Raymonf 6y ago
        What browser are you on? The navigation issues don't happen for me on Chrome.
        cstrahan 6y ago
        The latest Chrome. This has been a problem I've experience for years.
  - RankingMember 6y ago
    Amazon is about the last site I'd use as an example of a good UX. They've clearly been working on making it better, as the account drop-down has shrunk, but the amount of items on this screen is such that it really should have its own search to navigate it. A simple thing like buying a new gift card for someone is surprisingly clunky. https://i.imgur.com/ZNKOkMN.png https://i.imgur.com/ZNKOkMN.png
  - david-cako 6y ago
    github is great, both web and mobile (especially mobile). and their new homepage is great too. target's item pages are really good right now. I love the information density and layout on their site, which to me is suggestive of thoughtful human-oriented design rather than amazon's (highly effective) a/b test shit shoveling. amazon has "ship-it" UI standards and a lot of variance in page section order (could be a/b testing, or just discrete developer teams). they have lots of really interesting ideas scattered around for how they can reach customers with unique contextual information, but I have a hard time with how dynamic the layout is and they also don't know how to make good hero pages. too many over-compressed image banners and image tables. amazon and github both have crappy search which is kind of interesting to me. amazon sort basically doesn't work either, for price or for rating. not sure why. /ecommerce rant lol
- khalilravanna 6y ago
  I personally love Airtable’s frontend. That’d be a project I’d love to work on.
- jcelerier 6y ago
  > Which large companies aren't bad at web frontend? UX seems to always be far down on the list or priorities for modern websites. which web frontend is good ? (except HN)
- nemothekid 6y ago
  >Which large companies aren't bad at web frontend? I know it's popular to shit on them, but Facebook (and to an extent Instagram). Despite all the expansion, and third part integrations, at least for me (13" MBP 2017, i7/16GB): 1. Everything "feels" like Facebook. 2. It's relatively quick. I can hop from posts, to events, no notifications. I hardly use Facebook, except for marketplace, so I can't say for sure if users find the interface confusing, but the UI at the very least is well done.
  - akrymski 6y ago
    But then look at FB Ads Manager - it's hard to imagine that such a horrible UX drives billions in revenue and yet no one seems to care.
notretarded 6y ago
Try not using an esoteric desktop environment and web browser.
- snazz 6y ago
  A similarly-sized window works fine for me in Safari and Chrome on macOS.
  - janekm 6y ago
    Weirdly I'm observing the same behaviour as parent in Safari in macOS, and it really is baffling as the basic google.com website used to be pretty well & sensibly optimised.
    - snazz 6y ago
      Alright, I just tried the exact same search query and there is something wrong with the responsiveness of the knowledge panel thing on the right side.
- ornornor 6y ago
  Chromium is esoteric? And what does an “esoteric” DE have to do with whether a webpage renders well at a given viewport size?
- jabroni_salad 6y ago
  uh, I'm using chrome on windows on a 2560x1440 monitor and have a horizontal scroll on google as well. I actually have power toy'd my windows to a 60/40 split because of this and other websites unable to display properly with 50% width, which I really don't feel should be a huge ask considering the website works fine on a phone.
- ubercow13 6y ago
  Oh I'm sorry that Chrome, Google's own browser, is not suitable for viewing their own website. I guess it must be detecting that I am using Linux and breaking on purpose? https://i.imgur.com/nIQdZU7.png https://i.imgur.com/nIQdZU7.png
ffhhj 6y ago
Youtube UI/UX is horrible, try moving items in a long playlist, it takes forever to drag scrolling. Imagine a search engine company that doesn't have a quick search inside a playlist. And you need browser extensions like Youtube HD to fix several issues. It has been this way for years.
- Macha 6y ago
  The elimination of dedicated playlist pages also sucks for resuming progress in the middle of a playlist

sorenjan 6y ago

Which large companies aren't bad at web frontend? UX seems to always be far down on the list or priorities for modern websites.

ubercow13 6y ago
I find Github and Amazon's main site to be pretty reasonable in comparison.
- v7p1Qbt1im 6y ago
  As someone who regularly uses other e-commerce front ends, I find Amazon to be quite cluttered and messy. Also it‘s surprisingly difficult to quickly find a specific product.
  - Isthatablackgsd 6y ago
    I felt the same way with Amazon. Before then it was easy to navigate and finding the product that I want to buy. Now, I couldn't navigate it well like I did in the past. And asian-sounding names products took over first few pages of result which made it difficult to filter out. And they are crap quality products. It is easily to tell which products is made in. Hint the brand name is all capitalized.
  - 295310e0 6y ago
    I am simply happy that Amazon has not embraced the ridiculous trend of low-information density with large amounts of whitespace. Give me a cluttered UI that has everything available any day.
    - systemvoltage 6y ago
      Totally. Cmd+F FTW, if you wanna search.
  - ubercore 6y ago
    One pet peeve I have is getting to prime video. They own primevideo.com, but it just tells you to watch on Amazon. It's also the first result when you search (on google) for amazon prime video. There's no direct url to get it (afaik).
    - zerocrates 6y ago
      amazon.com/primevideo and amazon.com/video both go there. The situation with primevideo.com is strange, but it seems to have something to do with non-US territories?
      - ATB 6y ago
        PrimeVideo.com is the website (in addition to apps on mobile and living room devices like TVs and consoles) where customers outside of the US, UK, Germany, and Japan can watch Prime Video. In the aforementioned four countries, customers can watch Prime Video directly on their amazon.* retail website instead.
      - ubercore 6y ago
        Thanks, I had no idea!
- citrus1330 6y ago
  Really? Criticizing Google's frontends but praising GitHub and Amazon? If I had to pick a large tech company with a bad frontend Amazon would be top of the list. GitHub is not great either. I guess this kind of thing is just subjective though.
  - simonw 6y ago
    What do you find lacking about GitHub's frontend?
    - cstrahan 6y ago
      For one, they're using some sort of link / browser history hijacking (something like https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks, IIRC) which is buggy, for example: * say you're on page A * navigate to page B * navigate to page C * click your browser's back button, hoping to be back at page B * the github UI screws up and keeps you on the same page while changing the URL in the address bar * so you click back again * now your on page A, completely skipping page B * clicking forward takes you back to C Additionally, GitHub is insanely slow. This page, for example, takes 3 seconds to load: https://github.com/Boemska/create-sas-app/commit/85224fe66223cff69c7a34599f10e25bb697f300 https://github.com/Boemska/create-sas-app/commit/85224fe6622... Couple broken history back/forward navigation with long page load times and GitHub is easily one of the most frustrating web sites to use. Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing that GitHub doesn't have value -- it most certainly does -- but that doesn't excuse bugginess and absurdly long page load times. If they fixed these problems it would be 100% awesome.
      - Raymonf 6y ago
        What browser are you on? The navigation issues don't happen for me on Chrome.
        cstrahan 6y ago
        The latest Chrome. This has been a problem I've experience for years.
- RankingMember 6y ago
  Amazon is about the last site I'd use as an example of a good UX. They've clearly been working on making it better, as the account drop-down has shrunk, but the amount of items on this screen is such that it really should have its own search to navigate it. A simple thing like buying a new gift card for someone is surprisingly clunky. https://i.imgur.com/ZNKOkMN.png https://i.imgur.com/ZNKOkMN.png
- david-cako 6y ago
  github is great, both web and mobile (especially mobile). and their new homepage is great too. target's item pages are really good right now. I love the information density and layout on their site, which to me is suggestive of thoughtful human-oriented design rather than amazon's (highly effective) a/b test shit shoveling. amazon has "ship-it" UI standards and a lot of variance in page section order (could be a/b testing, or just discrete developer teams). they have lots of really interesting ideas scattered around for how they can reach customers with unique contextual information, but I have a hard time with how dynamic the layout is and they also don't know how to make good hero pages. too many over-compressed image banners and image tables. amazon and github both have crappy search which is kind of interesting to me. amazon sort basically doesn't work either, for price or for rating. not sure why. /ecommerce rant lol
khalilravanna 6y ago
I personally love Airtable’s frontend. That’d be a project I’d love to work on.
jcelerier 6y ago
> Which large companies aren't bad at web frontend? UX seems to always be far down on the list or priorities for modern websites. which web frontend is good ? (except HN)
nemothekid 6y ago
>Which large companies aren't bad at web frontend? I know it's popular to shit on them, but Facebook (and to an extent Instagram). Despite all the expansion, and third part integrations, at least for me (13" MBP 2017, i7/16GB): 1. Everything "feels" like Facebook. 2. It's relatively quick. I can hop from posts, to events, no notifications. I hardly use Facebook, except for marketplace, so I can't say for sure if users find the interface confusing, but the UI at the very least is well done.
- akrymski 6y ago
  But then look at FB Ads Manager - it's hard to imagine that such a horrible UX drives billions in revenue and yet no one seems to care.

notretarded 6y ago

Try not using an esoteric desktop environment and web browser.

snazz 6y ago
A similarly-sized window works fine for me in Safari and Chrome on macOS.
- janekm 6y ago
  Weirdly I'm observing the same behaviour as parent in Safari in macOS, and it really is baffling as the basic google.com website used to be pretty well & sensibly optimised.
  - snazz 6y ago
    Alright, I just tried the exact same search query and there is something wrong with the responsiveness of the knowledge panel thing on the right side.
ornornor 6y ago
Chromium is esoteric? And what does an “esoteric” DE have to do with whether a webpage renders well at a given viewport size?
jabroni_salad 6y ago
uh, I'm using chrome on windows on a 2560x1440 monitor and have a horizontal scroll on google as well. I actually have power toy'd my windows to a 60/40 split because of this and other websites unable to display properly with 50% width, which I really don't feel should be a huge ask considering the website works fine on a phone.
ubercow13 6y ago
Oh I'm sorry that Chrome, Google's own browser, is not suitable for viewing their own website. I guess it must be detecting that I am using Linux and breaking on purpose? https://i.imgur.com/nIQdZU7.png https://i.imgur.com/nIQdZU7.png

ffhhj 6y ago

Youtube UI/UX is horrible, try moving items in a long playlist, it takes forever to drag scrolling. Imagine a search engine company that doesn't have a quick search inside a playlist. And you need browser extensions like Youtube HD to fix several issues. It has been this way for years.

Macha 6y ago
The elimination of dedicated playlist pages also sucks for resuming progress in the middle of a playlist