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> #8 Not enough whitespace If anything software has TOO MUCH whitespace these days. It seems like with every UI update, everything gets 10% more padding, and

> #8 Not enough whitespace If anything software has TOO MUCH whitespace these days. It seems like with every UI update, everything gets 10% more padding, and I have to scroll more and more to see something that used to fit on one page. I bought a 34" monitor for a reason! Give me information density!!

bxparks 5y ago
Completely agree. My online bank redesigned the Bill Pay page with so much whitespace that I can see only one payee on a 14" laptop screen. They also disabled Ctrl-F searching so that I cannot quickly find the payee that I want. Instead, I have scroll up to the top of the page to use their tiny little search box, which causes a server request and a redraw of the list, which adds latency and friction to the whole process. Their old design may have been less pretty and slick, but it was far more usable and efficient.
- Matrixik 5y ago
  Did they block search completely or only Ctrl-F? Firefox and Chrome also have Ctrl-G and / that start the search.
- Cieplak 5y ago
  If you click the URL bar, then press ctrl-F / cmd-F, browser-native search should work. In my experience, this works around sites that override those keyboard shortcuts in JS to implement custom search functionality.
- azalemeth 5y ago
  My oldest bank account has a website that used to be very accessible, fast, and widely used, with several 3rd party parsing libraries on GitHub that would, e.g. scrape the whole lot and put it in a CSV for you. They then "modernised" it. The whole thing is a JavaScript nightmare, with only one static page, over-ridden OS shortcuts and a very confused browser autocomplete -- oh, and a ton of tracking tags. A grease monkey script and uBlock bring it back to useable, but I'm still silently shopping for new banks entirely because of how utterly ridiculous and user hostile it is.
TacticalCoder 5y ago
> I bought a 34" monitor for a reason! Give me information density! Indeed. Imagine an architect or a chip engineer or someone using some audio tool or a trader or someone using a spreadsheet working on a phone with "lost of white space" in the UI. I understand that people reading tweets and watching TikTok videos may like "lots of whitespace" but anybody doing real work need information density.
GoblinSlayer 5y ago
And that padding is in addition to a sidebar that occupies 40% of page width.
_greim_ 5y ago
Agreed! Gratuitous whitespace is a signal. A classic example is purchasing a full page ad in a newspaper with a single sentence in the middle. The signal is basically "look, we're throwing away all this expensive real-estate to tell you this one simple thing." I don't mind this occasionally, but the prestige signaling has leaked into everyday UI design trends. In my view, information dense UIs would be unusable without adding carefully reasoned whitespace.

bxparks 5y ago

Completely agree. My online bank redesigned the Bill Pay page with so much whitespace that I can see only one payee on a 14" laptop screen. They also disabled Ctrl-F searching so that I cannot quickly find the payee that I want. Instead, I have scroll up to the top of the page to use their tiny little search box, which causes a server request and a redraw of the list, which adds latency and friction to the whole process. Their old design may have been less pretty and slick, but it was far more usable and efficient.

Matrixik 5y ago
Did they block search completely or only Ctrl-F? Firefox and Chrome also have Ctrl-G and / that start the search.
Cieplak 5y ago
If you click the URL bar, then press ctrl-F / cmd-F, browser-native search should work. In my experience, this works around sites that override those keyboard shortcuts in JS to implement custom search functionality.
azalemeth 5y ago
My oldest bank account has a website that used to be very accessible, fast, and widely used, with several 3rd party parsing libraries on GitHub that would, e.g. scrape the whole lot and put it in a CSV for you. They then "modernised" it. The whole thing is a JavaScript nightmare, with only one static page, over-ridden OS shortcuts and a very confused browser autocomplete -- oh, and a ton of tracking tags. A grease monkey script and uBlock bring it back to useable, but I'm still silently shopping for new banks entirely because of how utterly ridiculous and user hostile it is.

TacticalCoder 5y ago

> I bought a 34" monitor for a reason! Give me information density! Indeed. Imagine an architect or a chip engineer or someone using some audio tool or a trader or someone using a spreadsheet working on a phone with "lost of white space" in the UI. I understand that people reading tweets and watching TikTok videos may like "lots of whitespace" but anybody doing real work need information density.

GoblinSlayer 5y ago

And that padding is in addition to a sidebar that occupies 40% of page width.

_greim_ 5y ago

Agreed! Gratuitous whitespace is a signal. A classic example is purchasing a full page ad in a newspaper with a single sentence in the middle. The signal is basically "look, we're throwing away all this expensive real-estate to tell you this one simple thing." I don't mind this occasionally, but the prestige signaling has leaked into everyday UI design trends. In my view, information dense UIs would be unusable without adding carefully reasoned whitespace.