
Show HN: Websites in 2018 - bloomca
https://2018.bloomca.me/
======
christophilus
I found a few bugs: It only has one JS file, and that isn't even 3KB. Needs to
be at least 3MB. uBlock only blocks 2 items, not 30. It doesn't have infinite
scroll, a sticky header, a fake chat window that pops up and says, "Shana from
support is here to answer any questions"... Oh, and the back button still
works.

~~~
supernovae
Publishers live and die by Google. They do everything they can to try and milk
out ANY ROI from ANY visitor to try and sell/market/promote.

Users don't really visit websites anymore - they sit on
facebook/google/Reddit/hacker news. So you have to REALLY market to those few
people you get from Google search results... as Google really wants you to BUY
those users from them - not write good content to get them (even though that's
what they say to do..)

one day you can be doing well with google - making enough money a day to pay
for your hosting and then next day, serps change and your traffic tanks and
you then spend more money to try and correct it and you start copying what
others say works - email lists, live chats, exit ads, moore mobile ads - you
pray you start earning high CPMs and you start looking to arbitrate - find
cheap traffic to hopefully pay less than what you earn to get more traffic and
you start falling for fiverr deals that are fake an SEO tricks that penalyze
you in the end and before you know it, you're 20k in debt running a website
that most people leave within 30 seconds and even though you may have solved
thousands of people problems my helping them fix something, learn something,
do something or expereince something they choose to create a facebook post or
tweet about it rather than comment or join your community - so those big
giants earn a LOT more revenue on publisher backs.. for the average deal,
facebook and google will earn 80 plus bucks a year on what you do, but us
lowly publishers will spend more than that per user to try and ink out some
successs

and in the end, the irony is that a website set up to show how bad the
industry is will end up with more links, more traffic, more google juice, and
higher link authority than a publisher with thousands of hours of work put in
being creative, helpful and insightful..

and you wonder why the web is getting so painful :)

~~~
matthewwiese
> penalyze

I'm not usually one to point out spelling errors, but this mistake is so
serendipitous given your usage of it.

penalize + paralyze = penalyze? Somebody call up them Merriam-Webster folks!

~~~
richrichardsson
Reading this I've never felt more British; those Z's hurt my eyes!

------
davidgh
I was in the AWS control panel yesterday and it popped a modal at me and I
habitually swatted it so fast before I realized “Oh snap, I’m in my AWS
account - that might have been something important” and had no way to get it
back. Page refreshes didn’t regenerate the modal.

Sad that I’ve turned into one of Pavlov’s dogs and that very reasonable
methods of increasing functionality have been abused so much that they are no
longer useable.

~~~
basch
I honestly consider this one of the most important computer skills, and its
something you can really only get by understanding the different layers (is my
prompt the os, software, which framework was it written in, a browser prompt,
a website prompt, etc) and that is: what happens when i click [ok] [cancel]
[x] (blankspace) etc. Its probably one of the most inconsistent experiences on
a computer. One popups Ok is anothers x is anothers cancel.

Ive seen most prompts before. I know what pressing cancel or ok on each one
does without thinking. And if I dont know what it does, I have to pause and
figure out the consequence of each button.

And when I watch other people use computers, they will close things, and I ask
them "what was that" they often respond "I dont know, I didnt ask for it, so I
closed it." There seems to be a persuasive misunderstandig that dismissing a
prompt will leave everything in its previous state, and that it cant make any
changes.

~~~
salvar
I'm always amazed at peoples' ability to observe users, and when user
behaviour doesn't match up with the intended design, think "Hmm... the users
have a pervasive misunderstanding. They need to be educated to understand the
design."

Could it be that the model you describe doesn't fit the mental model of a
typical human very well? Could the cause of this "pervasive misunderstanding"
be bad design, rather than dumb users?

~~~
basch
Its not about education. Its about a mindset. Trying to understand the
consequence of your action before you click. Reading what a box says before
dismissing it.

Read your prompts before closing them isnt the same as "the users have a
pervasive misunderstanding." Its usually panic. Its "im not a computer person
so Im not even going to try reading this."

Have you ever had the conversation:

"This came up on my pc, what do I do"

"What does it say"

"Oh"

------
jchmbrln
Good grief. I didn't last more than 6 clicks or so. This is in the "so real it
hurts" category.

The only thing you've got wrong is page load time and overall responsiveness.
This needs at least a couple more MB of JS.

Good work.

~~~
gerry_shaw
Agree, it definitely loads too fast to be a site 2018. \s

------
superasn
I thought it was a list of some unqiue interesting websites in 2018 and
robotically started dismissing these things until i started getting a little
furious when it hit me. Good work, it definitely fooled me.

~~~
erikig
How far did you get until you got it? It took me until just after the email
subscription modal... _sighs_

~~~
xg15
I think the fake "do you want notifications?" notification kind of gave it
away for me.

------
npmaile
I'm not certain this is 2018. I saw the words and letters immedately instead
of gray rectangles showing me where words and letters could be before being
shocked by the appearance of the actual words and letters.

~~~
ascagnel_
The "gray rectangles showing me where words and letters could be" is so
prevalent that Facebook used them in TV ads.

[https://youtu.be/Q4zd7X98eOs?t=39](https://youtu.be/Q4zd7X98eOs?t=39)

~~~
gitgud
Wow now I understand, what a great way to make users squint to read grey
blocks and lines...

------
nicoburns
Oh god. This is so accurate. I think the GDPR is overall a good thing, but I
wish they'd encoded respecting browser sent preferences into law, rather than
requiring a user-visible prompt everywhere.

~~~
lozenge
It's insane how P3P from 2002 was more advanced than anything the EU can come
up with now.

~~~
icebraining
The EU didn't come up with any protocols, advanced or not. The GDPR is not
even specific to the internet, let alone specific ways of getting consent.
It's up to the industry if they want to use fancy protocols to do so.

~~~
lozenge
Nobody has confidence that an explicit "I don't care about cookies" setting
would satisfy GDPR.

------
sov
Almost perfect, actually needs the following: Needs to be material UI but
poorly implemented so it's really slow. Needs a "do you have time for a short
usability survey?"\--bonus points for stacking it _on top_ of the cookie
notification. The "got it" button on donate/adblock needs to shame the user
more. There needs to be an on-hover action for some of the buttons that causes
an alert to push the about-to-be-clicked button down so the user accidentally
navigates away, then, when they navigate back, have to re-do the process.

------
lintroller
I was exposed to this idea a few days ago via this tweet:
[https://twitter.com/burgervege/status/1053557632265527296](https://twitter.com/burgervege/status/1053557632265527296)

I enjoy the result of releasing this experience into the wild.

------
mudil
As a publisher of the medical technologies news website (since 2004), I can
tell you that what we have now is monopolized internet.

Few entities, like Google and FB, took over the internet and crafted the
landscape to their advantage. They monopolized ads revenue, search traffic,
and more importantly, they are actively spying on the general public, taking
away any possible advantages from publishers. The result is a dearth of
advertising money for publishers and regulations aimed at destroying any
attempt to take over these behemoths.

When was the last time you saw GFPR notice on Facebook or Google? Do you think
publishers enjoy having "Please Donate" pop-ups? When was the last time you
heard of investment rounds in online publishers?

In the olden days we had websites and blog networks being born, Gawker,
Weblogs Inc, TechCrunch network, political networks, etc etc. And what do we
have now? Central stations with fake news shenanigans and retarded memes.
While publishers, including your local newspaper and your favorite websites,
are struggling. And that's the story behind all these popups.

~~~
supernovae
pretty much spot on. We have to change our habits if we want the web to
survive. I'd love to get rid of google tag mamager/analytics/facebook pixel
and all that jazz and it would be nice if people would signup with patreon and
donate a few bucks a month so i could work on publishing vs milking every
visitor...

wish there was a way that people would realize that getting back to smaller
communities and supporting publishers is actually a good thing

~~~
mudil
This internet monopoly is bad for our IQ, our society and our democracy.

------
codeulike
There is a tweet going round with a similar (but more glossy) video

"Every website in 2018" by @darylginn

[https://twitter.com/darylginn/status/1053646859686809600](https://twitter.com/darylginn/status/1053646859686809600)

edit: which is something to do with the 'UX Live' channel on telegram which OP
also mentions

------
andrepd
Totally unrealistic. It loaded way too fast. It should have: weighed 12MB,
taken 10 seconds to render properly on 4G, text jumping wildly around the page
while it did, and have slowed my pocket supercomputer to a stuttering mess
everytime I scrolled.

~~~
weberc2
Also, everytime you click somewhere to highlight something or tap to scroll,
an ad should load under your finger and redirect you to the product.

------
usaphp
One that I "like" the most is the "We'd welcome your feedback" popup that
appears the moment I open a website...like how am I suppose to give you any
positive feedback if you are preventing me from using your damn website in the
first place!

------
optimusclimb
Since pretty much every engineer under the sun knows this experience sucks,
how can we attribute this to anything other than the rise of MBAs running the
show?

~~~
superhuzza
Let's run through it:

1\. Do you want to receive notifications: Business or marketing request

2\. Your privacy/cookie warning: Likely legal requirement.

3\. Age requirement: I'll assume it's an 18+ site, so requested by legal dept.

4\. Subscribe to our newsletter: Marketing request

5\. Disable adblock: Business request

6\. Donate: Business request.

7\. Did you find what you were looking for: UX request

8\. Something went wrong: Engineering

~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
2\. For the vast majority of sites, this is a Business request, since the
cookies aren't necessary for operation. They're just for tracking. A login
cookie being set would trigger the legal requirement, but a user with no
account shouldn't even see the box.

~~~
VonGallifrey
> A login cookie being set would trigger the legal requirement,

Are you talking about the EU privacy and data protection directives? Because
they have an exception for Authentication, Session and Security Cookies as
well as several other types of cookies which are necessary for the function of
the site.

A user that is logged in should not need to see this either.

------
Zetaphor
Drives me nuts, click a link to read an article, get 2 sentences in and then:

"Want more content like this in your inbox?"

I may have considered it if you allowed me to actually read the content first,
but I certainly don't now.

~~~
ljm
Not to mention the guilt trip if you don't find the close button. "Yes, sign
me up!", "No, I don't give a shit about myself and my loved ones."

------
lewis500
Would've been good if, in spite of just being text and a few buttons, it had
been built with react, redux, redux-saga and had some contorted webpack build
resulting in five JS bundles.

------
dzwillia
Don't forget the JS library that senses your mouse position so that when you
move your mouse up to the tab bar, it opens a final "Wait, don't go! Here's a
free e-book, etc." modal on the page.

~~~
gitgud
I've never seen that, do you have an example link you could share?

~~~
hjek
Here's an example (that you can add to your own Wordpress, too!):
[https://www.brontobytes.com/blog/exit-popup-free-
wordpress-p...](https://www.brontobytes.com/blog/exit-popup-free-wordpress-
plugin/)

For more real-life examples, just try searching for some cake recipes. Cooking
web sites _all_ have this.

------
patatino
Too real! The chat popup is missing? Or I couldn‘t find it

------
lousken
ads blocked -> mine monero instead, also missing autoplaying video as a
background, scrolljacking and some weird bug in non-chromium based browser

~~~
brlewis
Scrolljacking is _so_ 2016.

~~~
beaconstudios
so the 2018 version would be the page being a fancy animation that you play by
scrolling, right?

------
sharjeel
Where are the auto playing video ads at full blast?

------
crazygringo
Related reddit thread from 2 days ago, on the video that inspired it:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/9q22c2/every_website...](https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/9q22c2/every_website_in_2018/)

------
whydoineedthis
I would change that second to last screen to be about browser compatibility. A
site being down/broken happens, no matter what year it is. But the fact sites
like BofA do not support a common browser like FireFox I feel is much more in
line with the other nonsense in this demo.

~~~
rossdavidh
Added bonus if there's a link to a list of supported browsers, and your
browser is actually on that list, but it still pops up that warning.

------
palehose
"Translate this page" is missing.

~~~
Retr0spectrum
Isn't that a chrome feature? I've never seen a website give me that directly.

------
fishingisfun
I used to make sites when i was a kid in the 90s. i want to get back into
webdev but without all the complicated stuff. How can i make an html only
site? any site builders like dreamweaver in 2018?

~~~
izzygomez
GitHub pages is free and great for static websites.

~~~
rchaud
He said "without the complicated stuff" and "Dreamweaver". Github Pages is all
command-line and uses Git for file transfer, does it not? I think the OP is
thinking drag-and-drop folders through FTP like good ol' Dreamweaver.

------
rhacker
Chrome and the other browsers should be slapped actually. Of all the popups
the one that annoys me the most is the chrome (I'm assuming other browsers do
it too) thing that tells you to run things in the background or web workers or
notifications or whatever it's doing.

That should never have been architected that way. It annoys me the most
because its the freaking browser that is being an annoying little shit. My
browser shouldn't be part of the problem it should be the solution.

------
eswat
Doesn’t work in Firefox for me past turning notifications on/off. Accurate.

~~~
cmnt
Don't forget to disable, if you have, "Don't care about cookies" extension !

~~~
edgartaor
Thanks. That's why it wasn't working for me. I think that extension it's
really working.

------
AnIdiotOnTheNet
So the real question is, what are the webdevs of the world going to do about
it? My guess is nothing. I can't blame them really, for everyone there is a
number that is greater than their sense of shame, but at least they could stop
pretending that the web is some brilliant platform that will lead computing
into a new golden age.

~~~
corobo
> what are the webdevs of the world going to do about it?

Tell the marketing department that it's a bad idea then have to do it anyway

------
brink
You forgot God's forsaken feature of the internet - Captchas.

------
ryanmccullagh
You know who has the worst intrusive popups? Stack Overflow. First, if you are
logged in but haven't visited in a while. They put a position fixed huge bar
on the top reminding you that you haven't been to the site in a while. I hated
that popup.

~~~
weberc2
Try reddit on mobile. They keep trying to push you on their shitty app.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
They've done a lot of work on making it more annoying recently. The "continue"
button that actually means "don't continue but instead go and install the app"
is inspired-evil.

The flashing app icons, seemingly on every interaction, .. I mean for real.

------
drenvuk
I love this. There's not enough loading going on though. Everything was too
snappy.

------
netcan
The depressing part is that this is an understatement.

    
    
      - please turn off ad blocking
      - GDPR: Consent to all these things: y/n (N)
      - --scroll 
      - -- choose from 6 confusing choices
      - -- back
      - -- try again
      - --

~~~
thibautg
With checkboxes looking like [X] (is it checked or not??), confusing on/off
switches, very big ‘Allow all’ button, fake delay to opt out from tracking, a
message telling you that you can’t be sure to be opted out if you do not allow
3rd party cookies, very very long list of 3rd parties to switch off one by one
(unless you find the confusing optional ‘disable all’ switch) etc. etc. It’s a
concentrate of dark patterns.

------
wbillingsley
Now hang on, that can't be right - I didn't once get a Google overlay asking
if I've ever bought a gift card for myself instead of someone else (seriously
Google, has your data analysis not yet shown you I'M NEVER ANSWERING YOUR
QUESTIONS). Nor even an autoplaying video with a five-second countdown timer
that expires before you can get done with the click-throughs and aim the mouse
at the one-pixel-wide target that will stop it playing.

~~~
fandango
Can you elaborate on the gift card part? Have you found a way to increase Play
Store credit in a private way?

I noticed that when redeeming a Play Card, I still had to fill in an address
and phone number.

------
sdegutis
The ad blocker and donation sections hit particularly hard for me, as I've
tried to make several web apps/games (like editfight.com) that didn't have a
clear monetization path, so I experimented with applying for ads, which Google
rejected as the site was too unimportant, and with asking for donations, which
backfired as the community was small, so it just appeared as me personally
being greedy to the users.

~~~
supernovae
i wish there was a better way... i make about 2 bucks a day on a site that
costs many more times that to run and most of my success (haha 1.00 a day is a
success? meh) is based upon luck - that changes every month depending on what
google thinks my content is worth...

yet those that cheat the system or have the money to "pay to play" dominate
it... just not sure that they're actually making any money.

------
mpolichette
Didn't realize it was a joke, got frustrated and left after 2 clicks and
left... decided to check the comments... you win.

------
biql
Doesn't have lots of mb of media and javascript files. Doesn't start playing
video. Doesn't use ridiculously large fonts. Doesn't display a myriad of links
with clickbait pictures and titles. Loads fast and doesn't make my laptop CPU
with 4 cores sweat.

In a good sense, that was actually not bad for a 2018 website.

------
artursapek
Making everyone implement a cookies popup is the most idiotic internet-related
piece of legislation I've ever seen.

~~~
Kiro
Yeah, the problem is that it completely overshadows all the benefits of GDPR
since most people just associates it with annoying cookie popups.

------
windyfly
Has anyone thought about adopting the permission management on phones to solve
such kind of issues?

Use NLP to modularize the T&Cs and create some sort of authorization system to
manage consents to various setups so we don't need to do it over and over.
Plus, it could be an unique identification system!

Just be sure to decentralize it.

------
anonytrary
Wow I was actually getting really pissed off with their UX until I realized...
that was the point. Well done!

------
cirgue
Feature request: an ad that asks me to rotate my device (bonus points if it
does it for desktop users too).

------
marsrover
First website, while at work:

> You Can't Visit This Website

> According to the California Law §28, Hague Convention and > Maritime Law, we
> can't show the content of this website to > people who have not reached 18
> years age.

I'm not sure what it was but I'm glad I didn't click that I was over 18.

------
navs
This isn't so bad. Maybe it's because I'm used to an onslaught of
interruptions and I automatically dismiss them. What hits me the most is when
I'm halfway through an article and then the interruptions re-appear. You're
never comfortable in your browsing.

~~~
moviuro
Firefox's reader mode does help for this kind of issues:
[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-reader-view-
clu...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-reader-view-clutter-free-
web-pages)

------
quickthrower2
Ha ha, ironically that is much nicer to use than most "real" 2018 websites.
For example: news.com.au / dailymail.co.uk I dare you to try those naked with
no ad blocker. Or dare I say reddit.com on mobile.

------
ju-st
A "Will you help improve the website?" survey popup is missing too.

------
throwrhebrick
I've started blocking a bunch of these sites from my searches using uBlock
Origin. I don't even use websites that aren't someone's blog anymore because
I'm sick of the trendy bs.

------
forrestthewoods
Please add a 5 second gmail loading screen before your page is interactive.

------
supernovae
As someone who is trying to run a website, I try and avoid these pitfalls -
just not sure how to actually survive/compete in a world where this stuff you
hate is where the bread and butter is.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Whats the point of surviving if it means contributing to making the world a
place you don't want to live in? You can probably earn a living some other
way.

~~~
supernovae
I don't want to give up, I just want to see what people actually want out of
content/publishers/journalism...

just for example - asking HOW/WHAT to change got me downvoted here... how can
the creative publishing industry survive if it's being punished for asking
what would be better?

------
quizme2000
The back button wasn't broken, I didn't get a disbale adblock notification, or
a pop-up when trying to close the tab. Definitely not 2018 enough /s

~~~
anonytrary
Really? That's strange, I got a disable ad-block request.

------
SamWhited
This clearly wasn't created by someone at Yelp; it didn't show deceptive
reviews asking me to download the Android app every time I visit a page.

------
dolzenko
Things missing:

* (weird) scroll animation effects, like paragraphs appearing out of nowhere etc.

* Disqus/other comment section loading (with screwing other elements position)

------
andrewstuart
Are there any websites that _don 't_ use cookies?

Maybe the browser should have a global disclaimer that all websites use
cookies unless otherwise stated.

~~~
Nadya
Plenty - just not the kind most people are browsing.

My personal website doesn't use any Javascript or set any cookies and doesn't
track the user.

------
trulyrandom
I don't get it. I click "Start" and then "no" when asked to allow
notifications. After that I get a blank page.

------
wingerlang
You forgot the "live at product hunt" combined with the annoying "HI IM X LETS
CHAT?" that takes up each corner.

------
sv12l
Good run. Feature request: you are missing the pop up (awww sorry to go/before
you go..) when you are about to close the tab.

------
z3t4
The fact that I thought this was a real site until the third or fourth click
really shows how bad it really is.

------
leetbulb
You forgot to hijack the back button :)

------
itsevrgrn
This website is missing a subscription gate. How am I able to view the site if
I'm not a member!?

------
crooked-v
This definitely needs to be either Material UI or a barely reskinned Bootstrap
to better fit the look.

------
buzzert
I have JS disabled, but I was still able to see the “Start” button and some
text. Not accurate!

------
nyxtom
You forgot the splash loading screen to load in the tens of MB of javascript

------
tom4000
Didn't get any useful content. Goddesses bless script blockers.

------
dexterdexter
Where is the "Would you like to install the app" header?

------
tarosnow
This is the terrible version of that GIF circulating on twitter.

------
hn17
Sad, but true. Time to change.

------
himangshuj
where are the ads that block 70% of the screen?

------
hsavit1
why isn't video content auto-playing???

------
dang
Url changed from [https://github.com/Bloomca/website-
in-2018](https://github.com/Bloomca/website-in-2018), which points to this,
which makes the point rather more effectively.

------
nkkollaw
Is it in Times New Roman, or it's not loading some stylesheet?

