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Mistakes in Web Design
- dominik 18y ago1. Bad Search 2. PDF Files for Online Reading 3. Not Changing the Color of Visited Links 4. Non-Scannable Text 5. Fixed Font Size 6. Page Titles With Low Search Engine Visibility 7. Anything That Looks Like an Advertisement 8. Violating Design Conventions 9. Opening New Browser Windows 10. Not Answering Users' Questions
- dominik 18y agoI find myself wishing HN didn't violate 1 and 3.
- sant0sk1 18y agoI don't know what you're talking about when you say HN violates #3 on the list. http://skitch.com/sant0sk1/1sfy/top6 http://skitch.com/sant0sk1/1sfy/top6 Can you guess which stories I've already clicked thru?
- dlimeb 18y agoYes, but we can't tell which comment threads you've looked at.
- mojuba 18y agoThe problem is, there might be new comments even if you visited the thread. But there's a remedy for it and it's simple: the link includes the number of comments in that discussion, so that your browser can change the color if the number of comments has changed since your last visit. Edit: e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=268389&c=21 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=268389&c=21
- ichverstehe 18y agoThat is so very simple and genious. PG, better implement this pronto, shouldn't take more than five lispy, lispy seconds.
- pg 18y agoVery clever. I may do that. But it would take more than 5 seconds, because I have to think about the best way to distinguish between visited and unvisited links.
- gojomo 18y agoWhy not just use the same slight-fading that's used for submission titles? (Also: simply changing the link URL would mean users could make a change in their local stylesheets, even if there's no styling change at News.YC.)
- mhartl 18y agoThis is neat. I've been using this technique ever since stumbling across it in "Building Communities with Software" by Joel Spolsky (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswithSo.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswi...). Money quote: Q. Why don't you have some kind of system so I can see what posts I've already read? A. We have the best system that can be implemented in a distributed, scalable fashion: we let everyone's browser keep track of it. Web browsers will change the color of the links you've already visited from blue to purple. So all we have to do is subtly change the URL for each topic to include the number of replies available; that way when there are additional replies the post will appear in the "unread" color again. Anything more elaborate than this would be harder to build and would needlessly complicate the UI.
- slater 18y agoLet me introduce you to bookmarklets, specifically the "zap" bookmarklets: https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html
- Xichekolas 18y agoI wonder what I am doing wrong, as my visited links don't gray out like that. Of course, now that I think about it, my Google results don't change color after visiting them either, so maybe it's something with my browser (FF3).
- pmsaue0 18y agoIt's always seemed odd to me that the link to the comments for any article is small text and light gray, especially since the discussions are usually the real reason I visit the site. Visually, the comments link should be on par with the article link. IMO
- babul 18y agoI know http://www.searchyc.com http://www.searchyc.com et al exist, but still do not understand why HN does not have its own search facility.
- pg 18y agoBecause I have a lot of things to do and don't have infinite time. Implementing search right is not trivial.
- globalrev 18y agoUse google custom search?
- dcminter 18y agoBut "real" Google's just as good for that: http://www.google.com/search?q=globalrev+site://news.ycombinator.com http://www.google.com/search?q=globalrev+site://news.ycombin... I think it's reasonable to assume on a "Hacker News" site that the clientele will be up to figuring that out.
- globalrev 18y agook didn't know exacrly how it worked but "search YC" is actually awesome, why not just integrate their service?
- kirubakaran 18y agoIn the mean time, can't you set up search powered by searchyc.com? (At present I use Xichekolas' HN Toolkit GM script that does this.)
- henning 18y agoThis is why $DEITY invented Lucene/Solr, Sphinx, etc.
- dominik 18y agoWhy not add a 'search' link to the top navigation that just links to searchyc.com? Estimated implementation time: 1 to 5 minutes. Then, when HN's own search arrives, you could replace that link.
- sysop073 18y agoThe power of #7 continues to amaze me. I've had times where I scan a page for something I know is there, and after a minute I realize I was skipping over it because it looked like an ad, completely subconsciously
- bouncingsoul 18y ago#5 is a flaw in IE, not a web design mistake. Edit (since my original brusqueness earned a downvote): The flaw is that IE6 cannot resize text sized in pixels. IE7 fixed this with its new zoom feature, but left the old, broken resize method untouched. Every other modern browser can resize pixel-sized text. I personally prefer sizing text in pixels because browsers handle ems and percents differently. Usually it works out fine, but it's really annoying to futz with fractions of an em because one browser rounded it up while others rounded it down. Pixels also make the translation from mockups to code a tad easier.
- puns 18y agoIndeed — and it's almost irrelevant now anyway as IE6 is dying off.
- nuclear_eclipse 18y agoYou/we wish...
- dominik 18y agoIt's falling, but not that quickly. IE6 still has 25.3% market share: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
- whatusername 18y agoAnd of course: "W3Schools is a website for people with an interest for web technologies. These people are more interested in using alternative browsers than the average user. The average user tends to use Internet Explorer, since it comes preinstalled with Windows. Most do not seek out other browsers. These facts indicate that the browser figures above are not 100% realistic. Other web sites have statistics showing that Internet Explorer is used by at least 80% of the users."
- makecheck 18y agoNo, I've seen plenty of sites that go to great effort to choose a font size (something that should be a user preference / fluid layout). It is very aggravating on large displays, or for people with imperfect vision.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- Xichekolas 18y ago> "The worst example of not answering users' questions is to avoid listing the price of products and services. No B2C ecommerce site would make this mistake, but it's rife in B2B ... Price is the most specific piece of info customers use to understand the nature of an offering, and not providing it makes people feel lost ..." QFT. I pretty much immediately leave a site if the price is hard to find or figure out. If your pricing model doesn't fit in a neat little table (like http://github.com/plans http://github.com/plans), then you are going to lose a lot of customers who just want something now, and are willing to pay for it. Making the customer call to negotiate some 'custom solution' (with associated 'custom price') just makes it a hassle for them to give you money. Instead, make it easy for people to give you money.
- wmf 18y agoOTOH, if your product does not work out of the box then the customer who wants something now should not buy your product. Not listing the price prevents these customers from buying the product and then clogging the support line. :-)
- Xichekolas 18y agoI think that is why I avoid such sites. No price says to me that they don't actually have a product, but are willing to string me along with buzzword bingo until they can build something half-assed for me.
- dmoney 18y ago2. PDF Files for Online Reading This should be #1. You can always search the site with google if I have to.
- sh1mmer 18y agoIronically because of a flaw in Adobe reader #2 is also a security hole which allows malicious 3rd parties to run arbitrary javascript on your domain. You should force all PDFs to download.