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Way back when I first started learning to build web pages [when HTML4 was just a glint in Tim Berners-Lees eye], it was conidered bad form not to prvide a 'widt

Way back when I first started learning to build web pages [when HTML4 was just a glint in Tim Berners-Lees eye], it was conidered bad form not to prvide a 'width' and 'height' attribute for an image you were placing on the page. Because if you provided these, the browser would know how much space to leave for the image to occupy after it had downloaded [this was back in the dial-up modem days. So images usually loaded gradually after the rest of the page] and so the layout of the page would not change. Conversely, if you didn't provide 'width' and 'height' attributes, the browser would only leave a default small icon sized space for the image and then you'd have the page content move and shuffle about as each image downloaded and the rest of the page content got elbowed out of the way, to accommodate it. It's funny how such basic concepts of usability seem to have fallen by the wayside in our new modern Web3 [or whatever version buzzword we're on now] in favour of moving content, modal overlays and the like. And, since so many sites these days just aggregate content from countless other external sources, even that basic notion of pre-defining your image sizes is often neglected too.

xeonmc 4y ago
Every time I'm reminded of this: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/333/130/835.gif https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/333/130/835...
deckard1 4y ago
> basic concepts of usability seem to have fallen by the wayside Sadly, the tech may have changed but both our ideas on usability and the incentives at play have remained the same. Which is to say, the devs I know of all know that popup videos, banners, modals, etc. are all trash much like the popup ad banners of 1997. But we do them anyway because the people that pay us have financial incentives that have been proven via misguided A/B testing that they work. And by misguided I mean... we're talking about manipulation, right? That's the whole shell game of A/B testing. You're testing your way to what works best for you and not your users. It's Tinder knowing the perfect match for you but not showing you that person because you'll quit the app if you ever met them. I can't even take a11y or people that advocate a11y seriously today. You built modals and carousels with frustrating timeouts that slide content before I'm done looking at it! You're a circus clown.
- nkrisc 4y ago
  > That's the whole shell game of A/B testing. You're testing your way to what works best for you and not your users. A/B testing is a tool. Any tool can be misused.
  - FridgeSeal 4y ago
    On one hand: If a tool is being constantly and egregiously misused at large scale, might it not be reasonable to assign a degree of blame to the tool (e.g. tool has a “pit of success” that encourages/permits misuse. On the other hand: marketing and execs could misuse and abuse an empty room if they do desired, so I wonder why we bother giving them tools in the first place.
    - nkrisc 4y ago
      > If a tool is being constantly and egregiously misused at large scale That’s quite the claim.
    - hellweaver666 4y ago
      Cars kill people every day. Is the car to blame?
  - Moru 4y ago
    A tool that tests a change that puts off a person permanently won't give a good result if that person never comes back. It's often better to think through and ask a few users before starting developement. If your change is made only to lure people in, not improve their life in any way, mabe you should not even start the A/B testing at all...
    - nkrisc 4y ago
      > If your change is made only to lure people in, not improve their life in any way, mabe you should not even start the A/B testing at all... Yes. It is totally possible to misuse the tool and run bad tests. That’s why, at least where I work, we don’t run live A/B tests until we’ve done some initial validation that the idea isn’t just terrible, and we have some level of confidence it will work and not harm the user’s experience. For example, we could segment user feedback and customer support issues we received by test variant so we could look for unexpected issues we might have inadvertently caused with the challenger design. I can’t speak for how A/B testing is used elsewhere, but every A/B test I’ve run has been because we thought it would improve things for the user. You certainly could run an A/B test to see which banner ad is more deceitful, just like you could use React to build the website that sells the scam medicine that banner ad is advertising.
frereubu 4y ago
This - "Cumulative Layout Shift" - is part of Google's Core Web Vitals - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9205520?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9205520?hl=en - so if people are doing that, they're going to be penalised by Google. (Although probably only a bit, given the number of other factors that go into search rankings).
- Beldin 4y ago
  Meuh - google does this with youtube. Load video: video centered. Oh there's a side bar, let's shift the video. Oh the contents needs a smaller dimension, let's shift again. Rather annoying if you're used to watching videos at more than default speed - the control for that shifts 2-3 times.
  - solardev 4y ago
    I don't think Google's other products have to play by the same rules.
  - jakear 4y ago
    Protip: mash > to increase playback speed.
  - frereubu 4y ago
    Google is so huge that, as we say in the UK, it doesn't know its arse from its elbow - the teams are so disparate that it would be difficult to coordinate. Besides which, the "other factors" that I mention heavily favour a site like YouTube, such as the enormous number of inbound links, to a point where they can ignore the inconvenient bits of Core Web Vitals.
at-fates-hands 4y ago
One of my first jobs as a front-end dev, I was told repeatedly if you released a site and had forgotten to put height, width on images, it was seen as a defect and would affect your year end metrics. By my second or third job, nobody seemed to care about it and when I brought it up, it was brushed aside as a "browser issue" and not something we devs needed to worry about. You make a great point, and something I'm seeing a lot more of now that I'm in accessibility.

xeonmc 4y ago

Every time I'm reminded of this: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/333/130/835.gif https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/333/130/835...

deckard1 4y ago

> basic concepts of usability seem to have fallen by the wayside Sadly, the tech may have changed but both our ideas on usability and the incentives at play have remained the same. Which is to say, the devs I know of all know that popup videos, banners, modals, etc. are all trash much like the popup ad banners of 1997. But we do them anyway because the people that pay us have financial incentives that have been proven via misguided A/B testing that they work. And by misguided I mean... we're talking about manipulation, right? That's the whole shell game of A/B testing. You're testing your way to what works best for you and not your users. It's Tinder knowing the perfect match for you but not showing you that person because you'll quit the app if you ever met them. I can't even take a11y or people that advocate a11y seriously today. You built modals and carousels with frustrating timeouts that slide content before I'm done looking at it! You're a circus clown.

nkrisc 4y ago
> That's the whole shell game of A/B testing. You're testing your way to what works best for you and not your users. A/B testing is a tool. Any tool can be misused.
- FridgeSeal 4y ago
  On one hand: If a tool is being constantly and egregiously misused at large scale, might it not be reasonable to assign a degree of blame to the tool (e.g. tool has a “pit of success” that encourages/permits misuse. On the other hand: marketing and execs could misuse and abuse an empty room if they do desired, so I wonder why we bother giving them tools in the first place.
  - nkrisc 4y ago
    > If a tool is being constantly and egregiously misused at large scale That’s quite the claim.
  - hellweaver666 4y ago
    Cars kill people every day. Is the car to blame?
- Moru 4y ago
  A tool that tests a change that puts off a person permanently won't give a good result if that person never comes back. It's often better to think through and ask a few users before starting developement. If your change is made only to lure people in, not improve their life in any way, mabe you should not even start the A/B testing at all...
  - nkrisc 4y ago
    > If your change is made only to lure people in, not improve their life in any way, mabe you should not even start the A/B testing at all... Yes. It is totally possible to misuse the tool and run bad tests. That’s why, at least where I work, we don’t run live A/B tests until we’ve done some initial validation that the idea isn’t just terrible, and we have some level of confidence it will work and not harm the user’s experience. For example, we could segment user feedback and customer support issues we received by test variant so we could look for unexpected issues we might have inadvertently caused with the challenger design. I can’t speak for how A/B testing is used elsewhere, but every A/B test I’ve run has been because we thought it would improve things for the user. You certainly could run an A/B test to see which banner ad is more deceitful, just like you could use React to build the website that sells the scam medicine that banner ad is advertising.

frereubu 4y ago

This - "Cumulative Layout Shift" - is part of Google's Core Web Vitals - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9205520?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9205520?hl=en - so if people are doing that, they're going to be penalised by Google. (Although probably only a bit, given the number of other factors that go into search rankings).

Beldin 4y ago
Meuh - google does this with youtube. Load video: video centered. Oh there's a side bar, let's shift the video. Oh the contents needs a smaller dimension, let's shift again. Rather annoying if you're used to watching videos at more than default speed - the control for that shifts 2-3 times.
- solardev 4y ago
  I don't think Google's other products have to play by the same rules.
- jakear 4y ago
  Protip: mash > to increase playback speed.
- frereubu 4y ago
  Google is so huge that, as we say in the UK, it doesn't know its arse from its elbow - the teams are so disparate that it would be difficult to coordinate. Besides which, the "other factors" that I mention heavily favour a site like YouTube, such as the enormous number of inbound links, to a point where they can ignore the inconvenient bits of Core Web Vitals.

at-fates-hands 4y ago

One of my first jobs as a front-end dev, I was told repeatedly if you released a site and had forgotten to put height, width on images, it was seen as a defect and would affect your year end metrics. By my second or third job, nobody seemed to care about it and when I brought it up, it was brushed aside as a "browser issue" and not something we devs needed to worry about. You make a great point, and something I'm seeing a lot more of now that I'm in accessibility.