4 ms·

Forget about mobile, modern web sites suck everywhere, desktop included. Giant banners that stick along the top of the screen. Infinite scrolling that (1) leav

by dilap 11y ago

Forget about mobile, modern web sites suck everywhere, desktop included. Giant banners that stick along the top of the screen. Infinite scrolling that (1) leaves all elements loaded, severely limiting the amount you can scroll, and performance as you scroll deeper and (2) breaks the back button and (3) breaks bookmarking and link sharing. Click-interceptors that ruin the ability to command click to open in a separate tab. Shitty attempts at navigation transitions that ruin the Safari's built-in Back w/ swipe transition. Not to even mention the ungodly amount of intrusive ads on many sites. And God help you if you have flash enabled.

abluecloud 11y ago
Can I add sites that try and take over my scrolling ability so it's nice and "smooth" but just ruins my ability to scroll to the target area?
- MBCook 11y ago
  I've been seeing that more and more lately and GOD it's obnoxious. It suddenly feels like my phone is out of controls because things aren't 'moving' right. I don't know why they think it's a good idea either. On most sites it's way too fast and on a few it's slow as molasses. At this point when I run into 90% of this stuff I switch to Reader mode in Safari, which also cures things like insane font sizes and pages that refuse to let you zoom in. Reader mode not available for your site? I won't read it. If you want to go out of your way to make it hard to read (not just ads that distract, but ones that cover up or things like scrolling that break basic interaction) then you must not want me reading your content.
  - epistasis 11y ago
    I feel the same way about ignoring content that is packaged in a user hostile manner. However, the sites that do it do not care whether you or I read the site, they only care about revenue, revenue, revenue. If they lose 85% of their audience but get better revenue, that's fantastic for them.
  - nikanj 11y ago
    They don't care if we read the content, they already got their page view
  - bunderbunder 11y ago
    I would love to have a mobile browser that opens everything in Reader mode by default, and gives me the option to switch out of it.
AJ007 11y ago
I don't advocate using the law to enforce web standards, but if websites all followed disabilities standards it would be pretty straightforward to strip out all of the extra stuff. You could just browse the web painlessly in Lynx. It could be a lot worse. Misuse of HTML5 and WebGL could leave users wishing for Flash. Publishers are just scratching the surface for how poor web usability could be. Like really fucking bad. Prediction: we will see some hard sell porn sites make breakthroughs in this area first. There is some humor in hitting a "mobile friendly" website and desperately requesting the desktop version because its such a pile of shit. Many newspapers have fallen in to this trap. Even companies that should know better, like AirBNB have had issues in the past (can't comment now because I haven't looked in a few months.) Ironically if your company is data driven and doing a lot of front end testing, your winning design that converts users in to app installs may be doing just so because it is broken. As someone who has a decent number of users in developing countries I'll point out these problems compound themselves abroad. Users are on older phones, Android or Blackberry, broadband is limited, and resolutions are much lower. There are publishers and startups who are failing in other markets because their designers only test locally, may be not even on a real phone. You can't make the excuse that eventually everyone will have high DPI iPhones, because by the time they do, the first tier devices will be that much better and you will be developing for them instead.
- snowwrestler 11y ago
  > I don't advocate using the law to enforce web standards, but if websites all followed disabilities standards it would be pretty straightforward to strip out all of the extra stuff. In the U.S, the Department of Justice is responsible for enforcing the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The ADA does include language on web accessibility and the Dept of Justice has repeatedly signalled that it believes that that language applies to basically all publicly accessible websites. They are working on a new rule to clarify that, but its release has been delayed until April of 2016. But in every case so far, their standard has been the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 at Level A or AA. [1] So basically, right now it's looking like the law will in fact begin enforcing a web standard in the next year or two! [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/ http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/
s_kilk 11y ago
I bet some of the people on this site are guilty of these crimes. If that's the case, would anyone care to put forward a defence of why they do this to their users?
- yellowapple 11y ago
  Money.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
dilap 11y ago
Probably no one is reading this anymore, but I feel like this is an example of being fancy while also being true to the web page: http://pitchfork.com/features/cover-story/reader/bat-for-lashes/ http://pitchfork.com/features/cover-story/reader/bat-for-las... It's a fancy web page, but it's still just a page that respects the content and doesn't try to look like an app.

by dilap 11y ago

abluecloud 11y ago

Can I add sites that try and take over my scrolling ability so it's nice and "smooth" but just ruins my ability to scroll to the target area?

MBCook 11y ago
I've been seeing that more and more lately and GOD it's obnoxious. It suddenly feels like my phone is out of controls because things aren't 'moving' right. I don't know why they think it's a good idea either. On most sites it's way too fast and on a few it's slow as molasses. At this point when I run into 90% of this stuff I switch to Reader mode in Safari, which also cures things like insane font sizes and pages that refuse to let you zoom in. Reader mode not available for your site? I won't read it. If you want to go out of your way to make it hard to read (not just ads that distract, but ones that cover up or things like scrolling that break basic interaction) then you must not want me reading your content.
- epistasis 11y ago
  I feel the same way about ignoring content that is packaged in a user hostile manner. However, the sites that do it do not care whether you or I read the site, they only care about revenue, revenue, revenue. If they lose 85% of their audience but get better revenue, that's fantastic for them.
- nikanj 11y ago
  They don't care if we read the content, they already got their page view
- bunderbunder 11y ago
  I would love to have a mobile browser that opens everything in Reader mode by default, and gives me the option to switch out of it.

AJ007 11y ago

I don't advocate using the law to enforce web standards, but if websites all followed disabilities standards it would be pretty straightforward to strip out all of the extra stuff. You could just browse the web painlessly in Lynx. It could be a lot worse. Misuse of HTML5 and WebGL could leave users wishing for Flash. Publishers are just scratching the surface for how poor web usability could be. Like really fucking bad. Prediction: we will see some hard sell porn sites make breakthroughs in this area first. There is some humor in hitting a "mobile friendly" website and desperately requesting the desktop version because its such a pile of shit. Many newspapers have fallen in to this trap. Even companies that should know better, like AirBNB have had issues in the past (can't comment now because I haven't looked in a few months.) Ironically if your company is data driven and doing a lot of front end testing, your winning design that converts users in to app installs may be doing just so because it is broken. As someone who has a decent number of users in developing countries I'll point out these problems compound themselves abroad. Users are on older phones, Android or Blackberry, broadband is limited, and resolutions are much lower. There are publishers and startups who are failing in other markets because their designers only test locally, may be not even on a real phone. You can't make the excuse that eventually everyone will have high DPI iPhones, because by the time they do, the first tier devices will be that much better and you will be developing for them instead.

snowwrestler 11y ago
> I don't advocate using the law to enforce web standards, but if websites all followed disabilities standards it would be pretty straightforward to strip out all of the extra stuff. In the U.S, the Department of Justice is responsible for enforcing the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The ADA does include language on web accessibility and the Dept of Justice has repeatedly signalled that it believes that that language applies to basically all publicly accessible websites. They are working on a new rule to clarify that, but its release has been delayed until April of 2016. But in every case so far, their standard has been the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 at Level A or AA. [1] So basically, right now it's looking like the law will in fact begin enforcing a web standard in the next year or two! [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/ http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/

s_kilk 11y ago

I bet some of the people on this site are guilty of these crimes. If that's the case, would anyone care to put forward a defence of why they do this to their users?

yellowapple 11y ago
Money.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

dilap 11y ago

Probably no one is reading this anymore, but I feel like this is an example of being fancy while also being true to the web page: http://pitchfork.com/features/cover-story/reader/bat-for-lashes/ http://pitchfork.com/features/cover-story/reader/bat-for-las... It's a fancy web page, but it's still just a page that respects the content and doesn't try to look like an app.