

10 web trends that should die - article is from 2005 but could have been written today - edw519
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2005-12-31-n34.html

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mercurio
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.

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kajecounterhack
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
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.

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nirmal
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.

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

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

Not every web site needs to be a blog.

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

~~~
matstc
or not reading the signs correctly.

~~~
airhadoken

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

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

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

