Mistakes in Web Design

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html

by iamelgringo • 18 years ago

53 40 18 years ago

useit.com

dominik4• 18 years ago

1. Bad Search

2. PDF Files for Online Reading

3. Not Changing the Color of Visited Links

4. Non-Scannable Text

5. Fixed Font Size

6. Page Titles With Low Search Engine Visibility

7. Anything That Looks Like an Advertisement

8. Violating Design Conventions

9. Opening New Browser Windows

10. Not Answering Users' Questions

dominik4• 18 years ago

I find myself wishing HN didn't violate 1 and 3.

sant0sk1• 18 years ago

I don't know what you're talking about when you say HN violates #3 on the list.

http://skitch.com/sant0sk1/1sfy/top6

Can you guess which stories I've already clicked thru?

pmsaue0• 18 years ago

It's always seemed odd to me that the link to the comments for any article is small text and light gray, especially since the discussions are usually the real reason I visit the site.

Visually, the comments link should be on par with the article link. IMO

babul2• 18 years ago

I know http://www.searchyc.com et al exist, but still do not understand why HN does not have its own search facility.

pg2• 18 years ago

Because I have a lot of things to do and don't have infinite time. Implementing search right is not trivial.

globalrev2• 18 years ago

Use google custom search?

kirubakaran• 18 years ago

In the mean time, can't you set up search powered by searchyc.com?

(At present I use Xichekolas' HN Toolkit GM script that does this.)

henning• 18 years ago

This is why $DEITY invented Lucene/Solr, Sphinx, etc.

dominik4• 18 years ago

Why not add a 'search' link to the top navigation that just links to searchyc.com? Estimated implementation time: 1 to 5 minutes. Then, when HN's own search arrives, you could replace that link.

babul2• 18 years ago

Appreciating how busy you are, what you do (thank you), how HN is built, the fact HN is not a business par se, and that one would rather not have a feature than something poorly implemented, it nonetheless would still be helpful to many even in a basic form.

Generally, most people here are capable of finding what they want/need (e.g. using the methods repeatedly outlined throughout HN), but that is not really the point.

In most (especially YC) startups, such features are the first to be implemented even if initially they suck - the mantra being release early and iteratively improve.

Hence, I'd have thought search would have been high on the agenda and one of the first things done (even if not optimally - it doesn't have to be good, just 'good enough' to be useful, and can be improved over time) as it is a critical feature in almost every site these days and even on HN is one of the most repeatedly requested and asked-about things.

I don't think it requires infinite time either. :)

sysop0732• 18 years ago

I don't really know why you'd want to search HN or an equivalent site, they're not meant for searching, they're meant for browsing

alex_c• 18 years ago

I think this page, as a counterexample, will prove you irrefutably wrong:

http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive

sysop0732• 18 years ago

The power of #7 continues to amaze me. I've had times where I scan a page for something I know is there, and after a minute I realize I was skipping over it because it looked like an ad, completely subconsciously

bouncingsoul3• 18 years ago

#5 is a flaw in IE, not a web design mistake.

Edit (since my original brusqueness earned a downvote):

The flaw is that IE6 cannot resize text sized in pixels. IE7 fixed this with its new zoom feature, but left the old, broken resize method untouched. Every other modern browser can resize pixel-sized text.

I personally prefer sizing text in pixels because browsers handle ems and percents differently. Usually it works out fine, but it's really annoying to futz with fractions of an em because one browser rounded it up while others rounded it down.

Pixels also make the translation from mockups to code a tad easier.

puns• 18 years ago

Indeed — and it's almost irrelevant now anyway as IE6 is dying off.

nuclear_eclipse• 18 years ago

You/we wish...

dominik4• 18 years ago

It's falling, but not that quickly. IE6 still has 25.3% market share: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

makecheck• 18 years ago

No, I've seen plenty of sites that go to great effort to choose a font size (something that should be a user preference / fluid layout).

It is very aggravating on large displays, or for people with imperfect vision.

bouncingsoul3• 18 years ago

Why is specifying a font size wrong?

tel• 18 years ago

It's more complex than just enabling font scaling. Many designs are not tested after fonts have been scaled causing breakages which render the page illegible.

Additionally, for those shooting for the greatest cross-browser accessibility, different browsers scale differently based upon whether you define things in pixels, points, percentages, or ems.

Xichekolas3• 18 years ago

> "The worst example of not answering users' questions is to avoid listing the price of products and services. No B2C ecommerce site would make this mistake, but it's rife in B2B ... Price is the most specific piece of info customers use to understand the nature of an offering, and not providing it makes people feel lost ..."

QFT. I pretty much immediately leave a site if the price is hard to find or figure out. If your pricing model doesn't fit in a neat little table (like http://github.com/plans), then you are going to lose a lot of customers who just want something now, and are willing to pay for it.

Making the customer call to negotiate some 'custom solution' (with associated 'custom price') just makes it a hassle for them to give you money. Instead, make it easy for people to give you money.

wmf2• 18 years ago

OTOH, if your product does not work out of the box then the customer who wants something now should not buy your product. Not listing the price prevents these customers from buying the product and then clogging the support line. :-)

Xichekolas3• 18 years ago

I think that is why I avoid such sites. No price says to me that they don't actually have a product, but are willing to string me along with buzzword bingo until they can build something half-assed for me.

dmoney• 18 years ago

2. PDF Files for Online Reading

This should be #1. You can always search the site with google if I have to.

sh1mmer• 18 years ago

Ironically because of a flaw in Adobe reader #2 is also a security hole which allows malicious 3rd parties to run arbitrary javascript on your domain.

You should force all PDFs to download.

Mistakes in Web Design

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