

Mistakes in Web Design  - iamelgringo
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html

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dominik
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

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

~~~
sant0sk1
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?

~~~
dlimeb
Yes, but we can't tell which comment threads you've looked at.

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mojuba
The problem is, there might be new comments even if you visited the thread.

But there's a remedy for it and it's simple: the link includes the number of
comments in that discussion, so that your browser can change the color if the
number of comments has changed since your last visit.

Edit: e.g.
[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=268389&c=21](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=268389&c=21)

~~~
pg
Very clever. I may do that. But it would take more than 5 seconds, because I
have to think about the best way to distinguish between visited and unvisited
links.

~~~
gojomo
Why not just use the same slight-fading that's used for submission titles?

(Also: simply changing the link URL would mean users could make a change in
their local stylesheets, even if there's no styling change at News.YC.)

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sysop073
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

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

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

~~~
whatusername
And of course: "W3Schools is a website for people with an interest for web
technologies. These people are more interested in using alternative browsers
than the average user. The average user tends to use Internet Explorer, since
it comes preinstalled with Windows. Most do not seek out other browsers.

These facts indicate that the browser figures above are not 100% realistic.
Other web sites have statistics showing that Internet Explorer is used by at
least 80% of the users."

------
Xichekolas
> _"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.

~~~
wmf
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.
:-)

~~~
Xichekolas
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.

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

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

~~~
globalrev
Use google custom search?

~~~
dcminter
But "real" Google's just as good for that:
[http://www.google.com/search?q=globalrev+site://news.ycombin...](http://www.google.com/search?q=globalrev+site://news.ycombinator.com)

I think it's reasonable to assume on a "Hacker News" site that the clientele
will be up to figuring that out.

~~~
globalrev
ok didn't know exacrly how it worked but "search YC" is actually awesome, why
not just integrate their service?

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sh1mmer
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.

------
dmoney
_2\. PDF Files for Online Reading_

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

