10 web trends that should die - article is from 2005 but could have been written today

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2005-12-31-n34.html

by edw519 • 18 years ago

8 12 18 years ago

ldambra• 18 years ago

“Let’s have a tiny font that looks better.”

I was amazed at the number of templates at CSS Zen Garden that use tiny fonts (I was recommended this site when I started to learn CSS design). More artistic maybe but certainly not functional.

jdueck• 18 years ago

A friend of mine recently discovered that his most lucrative customer base is age 50+. The next day he doubled all his font sizes!

nirmal• 18 years ago

1. “Our article is too long, let’s split it up into many pages.”

This annoyance has led me to immediately look for the "Print" link for every article. Incidentally, this has turned my desktop into a PDF dump of everything I read.

imsteve• 18 years ago

....and still only half of it would be good advice.

philippp• 18 years ago

Seeing at these are still "problems" after three years mean that a lot of people are doing them successfully.

matstc• 18 years ago

or not reading the signs correctly.

airhadoken• 18 years ago

  In Web design
  here is a thing
  to keep in mind
  don't make things
  hard to find
  Burma-Shave

mercurio• 18 years ago

The splitting an article into many pages has actually gotten worse since 2005. I personally find this incredibly annoying as it really disrupts the flow of reading.

Some of the worst culprits are technical review sites like Anandtech and Tom's Hardware where a single review will be split into 10 pages! Reuters is particularly bad too, and will split any article longer than a paragraph into multiple pages.

This is really page view whoring and should be called out as such.

kajecounterhack• 18 years ago

Some of these really sound nitpicky. The "Read More" links shorten a page so users can browse quickly through articles and see which ones they'd actually like to read. Sure, some sites don't need it, but its ok on other sites. Now, the splitting into multiple pages like NYT or Tom's Hardware, yeah thats annoying as hell.

If fonts are too small, your browser has a enlarge text function. Generally 8pt is small but OK and mostly readable. Any smaller (I doubt any site uses smaller) is a little un-userfriendly.

“Let’s treat the mobile web as a separate entity.” -- OK I take issue with this one. Of course you have to treat it as a separate entity. Have you ever tried to view "real" google on a Pocket PC? Its too big. The mobile version makes it easier to see. Same goes for many sites. Mobile versions of sites ARE functional.

“Let’s care about low bandwidth!” -- Well I used to think it wasn't important, until I realized that AOL dial up service actually still exists....

“Let’s read out loud the URL on TV.” -- Most people won't go google some unknown site on their own. If the TV tells them to visit the site though, theres a better chance they might.

“Let’s tell everyone Firefox is the better browser.” -- Firefox 1 WAS more secure than IE6. Right now however, I think the difference between firefox and IE7 is negligible enough... so whatever.

Overall, I think this article was written with too narrow of a scope.

tomjen• 18 years ago

When I read come across links I open them in another tab, by the time I come around to read them, they have loaded long ago or they will not load at all.

tptacek• 18 years ago

You know, they're not splitting up articles because they think YOU like it better. YOU aren't paying them.

alexfarran• 18 years ago

6. “Let’s do a traditional homepage for our company.”

Not every web site needs to be a blog.

10 web trends that should die - article is from 2005 but could have been written today

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