
Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015 - user_235711
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/biggest-mistakes-in-web-design-1995-2015.html
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toddmorey
"A long web page means you have failed to organize your site properly."

I think this is outdated. Longer homepages—ones that scroll down and
appropriately present the content with good flow, organization, and
spacing—are just fine. The Docker homepage[1], for example, is not afraid of
the scroll bar.

I only bring this up because I think the opposite idea of trying to cram
everything above the fold or spread it out across 12 micro-pages creates even
more problems.

[1] [https://www.docker.com/](https://www.docker.com/)

~~~
thomasfl
I totally agree. Long homepages is a good example of how much what is
considered good web design has changed since 1994. I remember making lots of
micro-pages, submenus and subsubmenus for even the smallest sites, to avoid
scrolling on small 15" CRT screens in 1995. JavaScript was considered really
bad practice until Gmail was launched in 2005 and jQuery in 2006. So there was
no dropdown menus, unless you used applets. I remember overselling Java
applets instead to clients in 1996 and 1997. Applets with listboxes and
checkboxes looked different in all the different browsers. Embossed shiny
buttons made in photoshop is hardly in use anymore.

In another 20 years time, what is considered good web design will probably be
totally different anyway.

~~~
clarry
You don't need JS or applets for dropdowns.

~~~
encoderer
You did back then.

~~~
frik
Javascript was very popular for drop-down menu ever since Netscape Navigator 2
and IE 3 (DHTML).

Java applets were a lot less common. Macromedia's Flash 5/MX took over that
Java applet marketshare around 2000.

~~~
encoderer
Yeah, GP said "dont need JS or applets", but you did indeed need JS.

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Turing_Machine
I agree with most of these, but as others have noted, the comments about JS
are out of date.

I'd like to nominate as an honorable mention "giant popover that tries to get
you to subscribe to the newsletter/install the app before you've even seen the
site.", because that's not happening with me. Ever.

~~~
ulisesrmzroche
I wonder why bugging someone with a big modal has gotten so popular, I still
think doing that leads to less engagement.

~~~
Turing_Machine
They look at the extra 50 people that sign up for whatever or install the app,
but don't think about the 500 people that clicked the back button and resolved
to never go to their site again.

A better way of handling this, IMO, would be to let the readers see (some
largish number to be determined) pages from the site and _then_ ask them if
they want to install the app. That way you're directing the pitch toward
people who might actually be interested in seeing continuing content from the
site.

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kyberias
I think this particular site (Hacker News) is really bad when considering
contrast. Just look at this comment after a while.

~~~
sangel10
Are you assuming that it's going to get downvoted so much that it becomes
illegible?

~~~
kyberias
Well, I may have made a bad prediction there. We can't be sure though... :)

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jcavin
I think #2 should be #1, it is insane on how many people can not articulate
what their website is about in a sentence or two. It becomes so frustrating
for a brand new user to visit a website and reads a bunch of marketing
gibberish.

Sometimes I think that a good test would be to have a 7 year old come to home
page of the website. Let him look around and then report back to you what the
website is about. :)

~~~
dredmorbius
Absolutely a _HUGE_ gripe of mine.

I spun out a quick rant on HN some time back which became among my most
popular comments of all time. Eventually posted it as an article on its on,
"Please Forward to Marketing":

[http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/27d5xr/please_f...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/27d5xr/please_forward_to_marketing_how_to_present_your/)

 _Tell me what the fuck it is EVERY GODDAMNED TIME YOU COMMUNICATE ABOUT THE
PRODUCT. It doesn 't have to be long or detailed, you can link to your
detailed description in the communication. But your press releases, emails,
Tweets, blog posts, marketing collateral, etc., are going to get passed
around, word-of-mouthed, and/or pulled out of drawers (or browser history /
searches) for weeks, months, and years to come. Make them work for you. A link
back to your primary site should be present where at all possible -- in your
Twitter profile if not the Tweet itself. Absolutely include links to your
primary site from blog posts._

.... and more.

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hiphopyo
About the Flash thing though. While there's a lot of sucky .swf files out
there, Flash itself is probably the best web design tool out there.

Super intuitive and minimalist UI. Whether you need smooth lines and shapes or
grid-snapped pixel graphics -- everything is always in vector until you export
it to PNG. By combining its layers with its timeline, you get a sort of
3-dimensional layering system which boosts your productivity by a long shot.
Then there's the whole animations / ActionScript universe if you're feeling
frisky. The perfect design tool. I'm so glad Adobe bought it from Macromedia.

Like they say: "Flash for graphics, Photoshop for photos, Illustrator for fine
arts, and Fireworks for kids."

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sprobertson
#0: inline advertisements that match the font of the article

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linguafranca
#2 is still a huge problem. Half the time I can't figure out what a new
startup or project actually _does_ for me. All I can tell is that they claim
to be innovative and better than their competitors.

~~~
sopooneo
Right. When people are so engulfed in what they are creating they forget how
much of it other people don't know. My own personal rule is "start by stating
the obvious", and then refine as appropriate.

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tericho
Some reasonable points here but overall it feels like I'm reading tips (with
examples) from 2005. The final point about JS made me cringe...

 _" My home page goes from 31,803 bytes to 71,488 because of the JavaScript
I've added to track visitors to my page and what they do. "_

Using bytes to make it sound extreme is just silly. 70KB is hardly relevant
today.

~~~
jacquesm
> 70KB is hardly relevant today.

That mentality got us into this mess in the first place.

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masswerk
While many, if not all statements made there are true, the page seems to be
adding the biggest mistake itself: The virtual tag-line is apparently, "How to
make a flashing website, if you've nothing to say and no intention to do so,
but for your interest in making money from it." (At least for me, this is
oozing through most of the lines, since there is seemingly no notion of any
interest behind engaging in a website at all.)

To paraphrase #1: Do you really think people will visit your site just for you
to make profits on it? – Actually, there has to be some honest and credible
commitment, one way or the other, in order to create some link to your
visitors. This is your major investment.

~~~
dredmorbius
You're not reading the piece well in this case.

First point: "These women are laughing at you. Why? You designed your website
for your needs, not theirs."

Write these two sentences where you can see them as you're working:

1\. The only reason my website exists is to solve my customers' problems.

2\. What problems does the page I'm looking at solve?

If your interest is in providing an _informational_ site (as mine typically
is), then the problem you're addressing is "what information is my reader
looking for, how can I convince them that I'm satisfying it, and then satisfy
it?".

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frik
The article is a bit dated, it covers only "1995-2010".

~~~
dredmorbius
Web designers haven't advanced in intelligence in the past four years.

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franze
hmm, hmmm i would add somewhere in the list:

not caring about webperformance.

i would put it before nr. 3.

if the contrast of a site is shit, well that sucks. if your site does not show
up in time, it's broken. and with "in time" i mean 700ms start render on
desktop. a site with a start render > 1.4s is completely and utterly broken,
you can have great webdesign, but people won't see it, because they will not
use your site anyway.

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kl4m
Those screen captures of embedded Youtube videos are a "bait-and-switch"
usability issue IMO.

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tim333
I think fixed menus and the like popping up all over the place deserves to be
in there. I often resort to 'inspect element' and the delete key to be rid of
them.

~~~
dredmorbius
Stylebot and element inspector. I've got ~2000 site-specific stylesheets to
address annoyances such as this.

I find visiting websites without my set of CSS mods _extremely_ painful.

Readability (or similar services) aren't a bad substitute.

Web design isn't the solution, web design is the problem.

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hlfcoding
Decent overview of the past two decades. But it's ironic the navigation and
decoration on that site are also great examples of bad web design.

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joaomagalhaes
They could have a search bar. That would be a nice design decision since it
should be easy to get to a certain article or website.

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tsomctl
Not mentioned: using a large font size so each line contains only five words.
For example, webpagesthatsuck.com does this.

~~~
dredmorbius
Sadly, sizing fonts such that they're universally appropriate is difficult.
Building a site which defaults to the user's preferred font size (though this
often isn't set), and otherwise scales up and down in size, helps.

I find setting the main body to a 45em width, with 4em padding, and auto
margins, is pretty close to perfect (desktop/laptop).

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eik3_de
#1 for me: anchor text containing the word 'here'. Bonus points for 'click
here'

~~~
rectangletangle
This isn't so bad if it's embedded in a sentence explaining where "here" is.
It can help in paragraphs where redundant information just clutters things up.

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escape_goat
Physician, heal thyself.

~~~
drdeadringer
... but he read "Naked Lunch" at age 15!

/s

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lorddoig
JS conflicts (as described)? Today? Really?

~~~
SpacemanSpiff
Yeah, that whole section read like something from 2002 to me as well.

