

Two annoying UI mistakes websites make - dcurtis
http://blog.dustincurtis.com/day-8049-two-horrible-terrible-ui-mistakes-to

======
nazgulnarsil
the simplest mistake is not getting 10 or so family and friends to look at
your site and watching what they click first/where their attention goes. This
will suss out 90% of UI problems.

------
abstractbill
_Most of the time, people don't have their browsers the full size of their
screen._

[citation needed] (seriously, I'd love to see some real data on this).

~~~
gnaritas
I'd say he's wrong, as far as I've ever seen pretty much everyone but
developers run their browsers, or any other app they're using, full screen.

~~~
alex_c
I would go as far as saying "pretty much everyone but Mac users".

Of course, then I would be just as guilty of generalizing without any hard
data as the author of the article.

ARE there any numbers on this?

Edit:

Here's a report from 2000:

[http://www.evolt.org/article/Real_World_Browser_Size_Stats_P...](http://www.evolt.org/article/Real_World_Browser_Size_Stats_Part_II/20/2297/index.html)

And another from 2006:

[http://www.baekdal.com/reports/Actual-Browser-
Sizes/actual-b...](http://www.baekdal.com/reports/Actual-Browser-Sizes/actual-
browser-sizes/)

~~~
abstractbill
Nice, so it looks like reality is exactly the opposite of what the author
claims. Thanks for finding the data!

~~~
dcurtis
Interesting. I'll update my post. Also, hilariously...

[http://dustincurtis.com/screenshots/Actual_Browser_Sizes_%28...](http://dustincurtis.com/screenshots/Actual_Browser_Sizes_%28final%29_-_Reports_-
_Baekdal.com-20090505-174638.jpg)

------
mr_justin
Both of those are pretty minor and not very wide spread. Especially so for the
second mistake.

~~~
mccutchen
Agreed. I run into the first one from time to time, and it does bother me a
tiny bit. But I just make my window a little bit wider and get over it.
Anyway, I'd rather there be no left padding than have a horizontal scrollbar
across the bottom.

And I've never actually noticed the second mistake in the wild.

------
poutine
Oh man, get over it. In the scheme of things these are not "horrible,
terrible" mistakes.

Was expecting content, just got whargarbl'd instead. :(

~~~
kyro
"get over it."

Why is this getting voted up? The guy's not sobbing and there's no harm in
using hyperbole.

Dustin is a very talented designer, and I'm sure he runs into this sort of
stuff all the time through the work he does, so it makes sense that these
details are more visible and have a greater effect on him than they would with
any normal viewer.

------
antiismist
While we are on pet peeves, how about the use of "blah blah blah after the
jump" and then there is not, in fact, a jump.

E.G. [http://themovieblog.com/2009/05/ladies-and-gentlemen-the-
red...](http://themovieblog.com/2009/05/ladies-and-gentlemen-the-red-neck-
tank-top)

~~~
knightinblue
That's because you're already on the full article page. If you saw it on the
main page of the blog, it'd make perfect sense, since the full pic isn't
featured on the main page.

Basically, the phrase 'blah-blah after the jump' should be removed from the
full article, which this blogger didn't do.

~~~
antiismist
Thanks for the explanation. Because of aggregators I hardly ever see the front
page of blogs anymore.

------
stevedekorte
I'd add to the margin issue that 3 column websites (besides being a mess in
general) are basically unusable without excessively wide browser windows.

------
ajkirwin
What you've done is far worse than those. I run at a healthy 1280x1024px

And ye gods the whitespace. The actual content takes up less than 50% of the
screen width.

