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From a technical point of view this "redesign" scares me a bit: All the old stories and user accounts 404 now. That is a major loss to their SEO. 14 million pa
by blauwbilgorgel 14y ago
From a technical point of view this "redesign" scares me a bit:
All the old stories and user accounts 404 now. That is a major loss to their SEO. 14 million pages just thrown away and not passing any juice.
They don't employ canonical or robots.txt.
They have character encoding issues. ("'Superbird' Discovered")
They use a meta keywords tag, and it contains "celebrity news", which doesn't appear anywhere on their site.
They hardcode CSS with styles on div's. They don't use text-transform but type headers in all-caps.
They use the HTML5 doctype, but none of the new tags or practices (like ditching the obsolete 'type="text/javascript"' on script tags).
The layout breaks without javascript on, and the "upcoming stories" section doesn't get loaded. They provide no warning as to why the site's functionality stops working.
They don't combine or compress resources like CSS and Javascript.
They left debugging and TODO's statements in their javascript.
$(".story-image-marquee-standard").empty().html("<img src='http://imoscar.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/imoscar11.gif' alt='' />");
tries to load content from a discontinued website.
A lot of empty placeholder divs to js-load content into. TPL's are also stored inside the page contents.
URL's are not properly encoded (space instead of %20).
Links to the same article are both with 'target="_blank"' and without.
They don't use microformats or schema.org.
- freehunter 14y agoThe layout breaks without javascript on I see this bandied about on reviews of various sites, and I continue to believe it doesn't matter. If you have Javascript turned off and a page doesn't load, you should know why that page isn't loading. It's because you deliberately broke it for yourself.
- orangethirty 14y agoI disagree. They broke it by not providing a fallback option. You always provide a fallback option, even if it is a simpler website.
- daleharvey 14y agoYou dont always do anything, you compare the cost of the effort against the value added, if its not worth doing, then people wont do it
- orangethirty 14y agoNot worth keeping your brand looking right? This is not about code, this is about their brand and how they protray themselves. If people see a broken website (for any reason, be it cookies, JS, or whatever), they will think less of the brand. Like you said, "...you compare the cost of the effort against the value added". It does not add anything to the brand, but not having a fallback takes away from it. And given Diggs current reputation, they need all they can get.
- daleharvey 14y agoIf >1% see a broken website, and >99% see them reviving a dead platform extremely quickly It is their tradeoff to make, personally I think they are making the right one.
- orangethirty 14y agoHonestly, how much time can including a <noscript> tag can take? Simple as: <noscript>Digg is awesome with javascript turned on.</noscript> on top of their other markup. That's it. Twenty seconds tops.
- blauwbilgorgel 14y agoYou are free to believe that. But let us say I want to cater both to you and to another user that browses the web with NoScript (assume it is my goal to cater to as many users as possible). I have two options: A) make the layout accessible without JavaScript B) break the layout without JavaScript. Only with option A do I cater to both of you -- Regardless of deliberate breaking or bandied opinions ("Thou shalt never mix style and script").
- freehunter 14y agoThe problem with NoScript is that it intentionally breaks the intended functionality of a website. I just went into the Firefox element inspector and deleted the code for the list of links on the HN homepage. Now they're gone! How dare PG not cater to my will to randomly disable parts of the website? You're free to browse the web with parts of it turned off. But you should expect that parts of it might not work, and if they don't work it should be immediately obvious why. Could Digg make it fall back? Yes. Should they? Only if they really want to. It seems they don't really want to. No one wants to cater to IE6 users, either.
- cutie 14y agoNo, the web is constructed of separate markup, stylesheets, and code for good reasons. If you prefer a tangled, dependent mess enjoy the results. The advantages to a separation of concerns and the security risks of javascript are real. Otherwise, why not just go back to the bad old days of single, giant pages containing everything?
- jamesbritt 14y agoYou're free to browse the web with parts of it turned off. But you should expect that parts of it might not work, and if they don't work it should be immediately obvious why. Yes, it should be immediately obvious, but often it isn't, and that's my biggest complaint with sites that rely on scripting for basic behavior. Too many times I've filled in a form, hit the Submit button, only to find that proper form submission does not work without scripting. Nothing on the page warned me, nothing stopped me from filling in the form, even though there are snake-simple ways to tell no-scripters of missing behavior, or to simply prevent bad behavior when scripting is turned off. (The other complaint I have is why sites rely on scripting to do things that are baked into HTML. For example, using divs as text areas instead of, say, using a textarea as a text areas.)
- dt7 14y agoA <noscript> tag would suffice.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoThis is what I do. Most of my stuff degrades gracefully, but for the few things which can't (JS demos/game things), I generally do something like this: <noscript>example.com is a HTML5/ES5/CSS3 3D graphics demo. Unfortunately, your user-agent doesn't seem to support ES5, sorry about that.</noscript>
- SimHacker 14y agoOr you could phrase without all the academically correct technical buzzwords, so normal people who are your real audience will understand what you're trying to communicate. Like using "JavaScript" instead of "ES5" and "web browser" instead of "user agent".
- awj 14y ago> Or you could phrase without all the academically correct technical buzzwords, so normal people who are your real audience will understand what you're trying to communicate. Normal people who are my real audience probably don't even know how to disable javascript, and most likely would enable it with no fuss if something looked broken.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoMy target audience know what it means. Web devs. For more general population-oriented sites, I have smiley faces and "JavaScript" and "Web browser".
- damncabbage 14y agoCounterpoint: Twitter went "down" for five hours about five months back because someone typo'd true in the blob of javascript it serves up. If your site still works without javascript, at least something will work if a bug slips through to production. (I agree with you for the most part; it's just when even page navigation breaks it can get more than mildly annoying.)
- polyfractal 14y agoThis is a silly argument. You could just as easily put a typo in your apache/nginx config and nuke your site. It has nothing to do with gracefully degrading with respect to javascript
- qq66 14y agoThat's not entirely true, there are hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people who use the Web only through a phone, usually a featurephone, and mobile phone Javascript is broken or nonexistent on many of these platforms. These are lower-revenue users, for sure, but there are a LOT of them.
- freehunter 14y agoIn that situation, wouldn't it make more sense to show them a completely different site based on browser id? Not just one that doesn't rely on Javascript, but has a completely different layout entirely? I would still question the millions or billions of users who view the web only on their non-smart-phone who will be using social media like Digg.
- qq66 14y agoI know from firsthand experience, ignoring Digg for the moment, that there are at least 500 million people who use a featurephone in India to check news, cricket scores, horoscopes, make payments, send emails, and send text messages. Their threshold for device frustration is much higher than mine.
- gcr 14y agoTell that to a blind user. Let's see how they react. If you have a site that breaks without javascript, you are leaving a significant portion of your customer base on the table.
- wamatt 14y agoVery detailed analysis there. Nice!
- rcgs 14y agoIt's almost like it isn't a finished product.
- loceng 14y agoIt's almost like they don't care about all factors that matter when doing a major relaunch of a site; It reminds me of the lack of care that came to be with the big initial design revamp that caused the exodus of Digg users, including myself. A UI that looks good doesn't mean it functions well.
- HannibalLecter 14y agoIt's not a product. It's a problem they paid way too much for.
- rpearce 14y agoFrom what I've read, their turnaround was pretty fast, so I'm not surprised by this. I suppose this was a "hack it out, get it out, refactor later maybe" type of job. Unfortunately, that ends up being a standard, with the "refactor later maybe" staying as a maybe.
- OriginalSyn 14y agoSeriously, the only time I've see the "refactor later maybe" style work is when there are devs brave enough to ignore deadlines and use the weakest of excuses to refactor a class or system.
- posabsolute 14y agoAdd to that the old rss feeds are broken, so all those rss readers apps have stop working with digg. I also really don't understand what was the decision behind breaking all older stories, it seems ludicrous they do not take advantage of that. Even worse you now have to login with facebook! they did not bring back the old accounts, this seems like a very frustrating issue. Unless they want a completely new userbase... I think they just threw the last remaining digger to reddit.
- devgutt 14y agoWhat about my data from the old Digg? We believe that users own their data. We’re working on a system that will extract all user data from the old Digg infrastructure. In August we’re launching an archive website for users of the old Digg to find, browse, and share a history of their submissions, diggs, and comments. from http://www.digg.com/faq http://www.digg.com/faq
- posabsolute 14y agoThing is, is it worth it to relaunch without user accounts and without a proper login solution? It seems to me you are really looking at not having those users that was on the site for a long time, it's not like digg and facebook really goes hand to hand together...
- posabsolute 14y agoSmall trivia, on mountain lion if you "drag scroll (like on iphone)" the scrollbar at the top you see an N logo
- verroq 14y agoApart from all the old pages being 404 (which is a huge mishap). Nitpicking on html is a fun and amusing pastime, but unless the page is deformed in some way, it falls into the "shit nobody cares about" category.
- rickmb 14y agoIt falls into the "shit that will bite you in the ass one day" category. It's about engineering quality, and it goes all the way down to the stuff we don't see. Given Digg's history, it's a bit of a red flag. However, it all depends on how this technical debt is managed. If this is an alpha release under the heading "release early, release often" and the tech debt is known, there's nothing alarming about it. But if this is truly considered a final product than it makes you question how capable these people are to revive Digg. Either way, some of these issues suggest simply a lack of skill/knowledge rather than deliberate tech debt. That's not a good sign.
- geon 14y agoAll the points mentioned are relatively easy to Fix Later (TM). Sure, they might become a problem eventually, but fixing them before launching "just because" is be premature.
- binxbolling 14y agoAt no point has anyone said this was considered a final product.
- pbiggar 14y agoThis is an MVP. The team is (apparently, from what I've read), doing quick iteration, fast cycles, and this is an MVP. In fact, I think these nitpicks are an excellent sign for digg. They discarded anything which was useless for their launch. Very well done - an excellent MVP.
- blauwbilgorgel 14y agoTo get a website up and running, most of what I listed falls indeed in the 20% category (80/20). But if you care about accessibility, usability and SEO you should probably care about HTML issues like pagespeed and validation. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 Create documents that validate to published formal grammars. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/response-times.html Users still hate slow sites and don't hesitate telling us. Google Webmaster Guidelines (Design & Content) Check for broken links and correct HTML. So perhaps it is the "shit nobody, but front-end engineers, should care about" category.
- lloeki 14y agoWhen I landed on the page I though "Nice, they made a responsive layout, like bostonglobe.com." So I resized the window, and... not. It just happened that my window was originally sized to their fixed width.
- dangoldin 14y agoFor a great example of a responsive news site take a look at http://www.breakingnews.com/ http://www.breakingnews.com/ I was pretty impressed.
- AlexanderZ 14y agoSeriously, it's been what, a month since they started working? They wanted to ship, and ship fast. It's not ideal (no software is ever ideal) but it works. I'm happy they managed to release something after just a month of work. They will now get the feedback and see how users are welcoming the new version.
- deveac 14y agoTheir model of going in lean, quickly deploying, and quickly iterating, all the while doing so with good communication and transparency is something I'm surprised is getting as much flak as it is from HN of all places...
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- nateabele 14y agoOh, sorry. You must have missed the part where they rebuilt the entire thing in 6 weeks.
- duck 14y agoAnother piece that is scary: I've seen two 504's out of the five times I have refreshed the page.
- zachinglis 14y agoThey say they know it's not perfect. But if you cut corners like using style attributes, you'll never get the code into a proper production-ready state. New features will always win over cleanups. Start right, it's really no extra effort to use CSS over style anymore. It is in fact quicker.
- doomslice 14y agoJust curious why you think they should use text-transform: uppercase instead of just typing in all caps. If you localize your site, text-transform: uppercase can render some things meaningless in other languages, or just cause issues in general with some languages (Turkish i, certain Greek accented letters).
- blauwbilgorgel 14y agoIn short: The all-caps serve a visual function, not a semantic one. It is akin to using linebreaks ("<br>") to create a visual margin. If you write: "... arrested by the FBI" as "... ARRESTED BY THE FBI." you lose information (which screen readers could use to better pronunciation). If you style it with CSS, this information (capitalization, acronym, stress-words) is retained. I didn't know about the issues with some foreign languages.
- crazygringo 14y agoDude... did you see how they built this in six weeks?? This is a MVP, not a finished product. It's a first iteration, an experiment. Chill.
- jenius 14y agoI would agree if the criticisms were super nitpicky and obscure, but honestly any site a front-end professional made in a day or a week would not include may of these errors. These are pretty strong signs pointing to the fact that at least one person coding this site is very much an amateur. Which is a pretty serious implication for the future.
- MatthewPhillips 14y agoCriticisms about not including microformats and schema.org is super nitpicky.
- blauwbilgorgel 14y agoI was listing stuff that made me a bit scared, as I browsed the source, not stuff to criticize the website with. As for criticism: I think the design and social integration is fresh and well executed. I make websites that contain more errors and look worse than that. It is more of a web application, than a web site. I listed MicroFormats, because: As a foundation for a modern website, it is a great idea. Digg has the traffic and authority to make rich mark-up work. And I think adding stuff like rel="me" to your social profile-links is kind of standard. It was certainly not a prioritized list of what to work on next. That would likely be more like: Deploy descriptive 404 page, Get old content redirected to new location, Comment functionality, non-Facebook log-in option, categories, option for a non-masonry list view, work on page speed.
- pbiggar 14y agoIt made you "scared"? Isn't that a little dramatic?
- happimess 14y agoOT, but this seems like an appropriate place to ask. I'm a competent computer programmer who hasn't done any front-end web development since 1999. Does anyone have a link to a good explanation of how to avoid these "obvious" mistakes? Most of what I've found via google has been along the lines of "put interesting content above the fold" and "have consistent site navigation area," whereas I'm more interested in character encoding, where and how to specify CSS, when to use span vs div, and that sort of thing. Thanks.
- obtu 14y agoUse the HTML validator Firefox extension. It will give you quasi-sensorial awareness of how the pages you visit are doing.
- perssontm 14y agoHave they skipped the categories? Is there no sorting whatsoever? Without categories I'm doomed to read sportsrelated articles...
- baby 14y agomost of the issues you point out really don't matter except all the old stories lost. > They don't employ canonical or robots.txt. doesn't matter > They use a meta keywords tag, and it contains "celebrity news", which doesn't appear anywhere on their site. doesn't matter > They hardcode CSS with styles on div's. They don't use text-transform but type headers in all-caps. doesn't matter etc...