Top Web Design Mistakes of 1999(nngroup.com)
nngroup.com
Top Web Design Mistakes of 1999
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/the-top-ten-web-design-mistakes-of-1999/
19 comments
Great text, and I agree wholeheartedly. I wonder how much work would it take to script the browser to work mostly in Readability/Pocket-mode.
Off-topic: I've noticed you're using a subreddit as a personal blog/wiki. Could you share more about your experience with such system, apart from what's written at the end of your FAQ?
Off-topic: I've noticed you're using a subreddit as a personal blog/wiki. Could you share more about your experience with such system, apart from what's written at the end of your FAQ?
On reddit as a blogging / wiki engine:
• Any time you don't have to set things up yourself is a win.
• The built-in features, including markdown, flairs, moderation tools, RSS, and comments, are great. The more so with RES (the reddit enhancement suite browser extension(s)).
• I'd really prefer a better management of images. I use imgur for image hosting, and with RES these _tend_ to appear with content, but users not using RES get a sort of bastardized version. Since I tend to use images for conveying more information (charts, graphs, and similar data visualization) this matters.
• Post archival. I'm reaching the point where some of my earlier posts are going to get archived ("frozen") and will no longer be editable or commentable (6 months after creation). Since I'm building a reference trove and want to be able to revise content as I develop ideas (my Questions post in particular: http://redd.it/1v052g), this is a bit of a drag. I've got a secondary blog that I may rev up as this becomes an issue. I can still access the source for those to port them elsewhere, but it's still a bit of a pain.
• Post length. Turns out that for text-only subs it's 40k chars, not 10k, which was kind of nice to realize. That's around 26 pages rather than 6 per post (typewritten, 250 words/page), which should be enough even for me.
• CSS. I've clearly restyled the site a bit, and I really like being able to do that. About 98% satisfied with what I've accomplished, and a few recent fixes (such as being able to create hierarchical header and list numbering in the Wiki) are really nice.
• Post flair. It's not as complete as tags would be, though the discipline is somewhat useful. I wish it were easier to maintain, though all told it's OK.
• Draft mode: A negative. I really wish I could start to compose something and save it without publishing it. Blogging platforms offer this.
• RSS. I'm absolutely and unapologetically in love: http://redd.it/1sxfar
• Those short links aren't bad either.
• Engagement from elsewhere. After a few months I am routinely getting far more (and better) engagement than I was on G+ ("the Other Place"). Links to other subreddits (particularly popular ones) have grown engagement markedly.
• Better moderation and engagement stats. It's nice to see my traffic stats, though it would be even better to have breakouts for 1) most visited posts and 2) specific user engagement stats. I use RES's user tagging to identify useful and not-so-much people, color-tagging as well. But seeing who's really engaged and contributed would be nice.
• Ways to deal with deleted posts. I've had a couple of instances of people posting good information only to have the post later disappear. I'm aware that there are some sites which archive reddit content, but I've learned to reincorporate that content where and when possible.
• RES again: the RES post editor is fucking amazing. Side-by-side view of markdown and rendered text, in particular, full page width and height. I'll <F-11> the tab to full-screen and write without any distractions. Compare to the clusterfuck that's G+ and weep.
• File storage. I've got a few things I want to be able to post which aren't images, and sorting out how to do that is a bit of a stumper. I'm thinking
• Comments search. As noted in the FAQ, it'd be really nice to have that. Oh well. Also a wiki search -- the wiki in general is handy but not particularly full-featured. I'm curious as to why reddit went NIH on that instead of incorporating, say, MediaWiki. I may branch out my Wikiing efforts to a different platform eventually.
• Search syntax: What reddit lacks in completeness it gains in features. The ability to look for content by user, subreddit, and other elements is a huge win, and I use search a lot. The ability to key my own subreddit's search URL into my browser's reddit search keyword means I get my own styling applied to reddit site searches. Yay me!
• Community support. There's a ton of help to be had on moderation, reddit features, CSS styling, and the like. That's been great.
• Expertise. I've got a former LLNL researcher and a nuclear powerplant operator among my readers, which for my areas of interest is great.
• User voting. Sadly, abuse of up/down arrows seems to be growing on reddit. While I'm a believer in some user input on content quality rating, I'm increasingly convinced it needn't simply be open to anyone. Though it also lets me know when I'm touching on controversial topics.
• A projects board. Along with drafts, I've got a large number of writing ideas I'd like to tackle, and sorting out how to keep track of those (preferably integrated with the site) would be cool.
• Data liberation. I cap on Google a lot, but the ability to extract all of my content from the site (and having created an archive extraction tool: http://redd.it/21t7im) is actually pretty cool cheese. Reddit doesn't have a similar feature that I'm aware of, though I can iterate over posts.
I'm not sure that another tool (possibly Drupal, which everyone seems to rave about) might not address more of my needs, but on balance I'm still pretty happy with reddit.
My primary challenges now are building a relevant audience, actually creating content (I've got a half-dozen to a dozen half-written postings floating around), and the like.
• Any time you don't have to set things up yourself is a win.
• The built-in features, including markdown, flairs, moderation tools, RSS, and comments, are great. The more so with RES (the reddit enhancement suite browser extension(s)).
• I'd really prefer a better management of images. I use imgur for image hosting, and with RES these _tend_ to appear with content, but users not using RES get a sort of bastardized version. Since I tend to use images for conveying more information (charts, graphs, and similar data visualization) this matters.
• Post archival. I'm reaching the point where some of my earlier posts are going to get archived ("frozen") and will no longer be editable or commentable (6 months after creation). Since I'm building a reference trove and want to be able to revise content as I develop ideas (my Questions post in particular: http://redd.it/1v052g), this is a bit of a drag. I've got a secondary blog that I may rev up as this becomes an issue. I can still access the source for those to port them elsewhere, but it's still a bit of a pain.
• Post length. Turns out that for text-only subs it's 40k chars, not 10k, which was kind of nice to realize. That's around 26 pages rather than 6 per post (typewritten, 250 words/page), which should be enough even for me.
• CSS. I've clearly restyled the site a bit, and I really like being able to do that. About 98% satisfied with what I've accomplished, and a few recent fixes (such as being able to create hierarchical header and list numbering in the Wiki) are really nice.
• Post flair. It's not as complete as tags would be, though the discipline is somewhat useful. I wish it were easier to maintain, though all told it's OK.
• Draft mode: A negative. I really wish I could start to compose something and save it without publishing it. Blogging platforms offer this.
• RSS. I'm absolutely and unapologetically in love: http://redd.it/1sxfar
• Those short links aren't bad either.
• Engagement from elsewhere. After a few months I am routinely getting far more (and better) engagement than I was on G+ ("the Other Place"). Links to other subreddits (particularly popular ones) have grown engagement markedly.
• Better moderation and engagement stats. It's nice to see my traffic stats, though it would be even better to have breakouts for 1) most visited posts and 2) specific user engagement stats. I use RES's user tagging to identify useful and not-so-much people, color-tagging as well. But seeing who's really engaged and contributed would be nice.
• Ways to deal with deleted posts. I've had a couple of instances of people posting good information only to have the post later disappear. I'm aware that there are some sites which archive reddit content, but I've learned to reincorporate that content where and when possible.
• RES again: the RES post editor is fucking amazing. Side-by-side view of markdown and rendered text, in particular, full page width and height. I'll <F-11> the tab to full-screen and write without any distractions. Compare to the clusterfuck that's G+ and weep.
• File storage. I've got a few things I want to be able to post which aren't images, and sorting out how to do that is a bit of a stumper. I'm thinking
• Comments search. As noted in the FAQ, it'd be really nice to have that. Oh well. Also a wiki search -- the wiki in general is handy but not particularly full-featured. I'm curious as to why reddit went NIH on that instead of incorporating, say, MediaWiki. I may branch out my Wikiing efforts to a different platform eventually.
• Search syntax: What reddit lacks in completeness it gains in features. The ability to look for content by user, subreddit, and other elements is a huge win, and I use search a lot. The ability to key my own subreddit's search URL into my browser's reddit search keyword means I get my own styling applied to reddit site searches. Yay me!
• Community support. There's a ton of help to be had on moderation, reddit features, CSS styling, and the like. That's been great.
• Expertise. I've got a former LLNL researcher and a nuclear powerplant operator among my readers, which for my areas of interest is great.
• User voting. Sadly, abuse of up/down arrows seems to be growing on reddit. While I'm a believer in some user input on content quality rating, I'm increasingly convinced it needn't simply be open to anyone. Though it also lets me know when I'm touching on controversial topics.
• A projects board. Along with drafts, I've got a large number of writing ideas I'd like to tackle, and sorting out how to keep track of those (preferably integrated with the site) would be cool.
• Data liberation. I cap on Google a lot, but the ability to extract all of my content from the site (and having created an archive extraction tool: http://redd.it/21t7im) is actually pretty cool cheese. Reddit doesn't have a similar feature that I'm aware of, though I can iterate over posts.
I'm not sure that another tool (possibly Drupal, which everyone seems to rave about) might not address more of my needs, but on balance I'm still pretty happy with reddit.
My primary challenges now are building a relevant audience, actually creating content (I've got a half-dozen to a dozen half-written postings floating around), and the like.
You couldn't possibly be more correct. That newspapers and blogs even have a design is unfortunate outcome of too much license for customization. It's hard to fathom complaining about flexibility, but we've really developed the wrong tooling and gotten entirely off track with our original goals.
If we'd have come up with a semantic document interchange markup, information would probably be searchable (without Google), computable, and easily discoverable.
In the end, I think it's the user that should determine how to style and display their content. The UI/UX should be software we're free to interchange. Like back in the 90's.
I like that you've outlined key areas for different platforms--that's something I hadn't previously given much thought to. Great analysis.
Do you see anything helping to break us free of this technological local maxima?
If we'd have come up with a semantic document interchange markup, information would probably be searchable (without Google), computable, and easily discoverable.
In the end, I think it's the user that should determine how to style and display their content. The UI/UX should be software we're free to interchange. Like back in the 90's.
I like that you've outlined key areas for different platforms--that's something I hadn't previously given much thought to. Great analysis.
Do you see anything helping to break us free of this technological local maxima?
I think the disruption will emerge out of new replacement tools, probably emerging from some of the existing systems, though not from the current major players in browser space (Firefox, Gnome, Safari, IE), which I'm increasingly seeing as dead ends. This is reflected both in history and in the present situation.
In the past, revolutions in browser models didn't happen through evolution of existing browsers so much as their wholesale replacement.
The Web itself supplanted a whole set of proprietary document formats, both static and hypertext, of which Tim O'Reilly has written and spoken about this in talking about the origins of O'Reilly & Associates. His Open Sources essay covers this tangentially, though I think there are better examples I'm not finding at present: http://oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/tim.html
In this regard, it's interesting to point out that the software industry's first attempts to improve on the web interface for active content--technologies like browser-side Java applets and Microsoft ActiveX controls--failed because they were aimed at professional programmers and could not easily be copied and implemented by the amateurs who were building the Web. Vendors viewed the Web in software terms, and didn't understand that the Web was changing not only what applications were being built but what tools their builders needed.
The upshot: HTML wasn't pay-to-play, you weren't locked within a proprietary "ecosystem". It also wasn't subject to the format limitations of postscript and PDF. It's even been backwards-bolted onto existing information infrastructures such as manpages and GNU Info documents via tools such as Debian's dwww:
https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/dwww
And so proprietary doc formats gave way to HTML. Lynx begat Mosaic, which added graphics, then Netscape, which extended graphics and a number of other capabilities, until it fell over under its own bloated mass of bugs and technical debt and birthed Mozilla.
Tabbed browsing came by way of ... um, whatever it was that graced HN a week or so back, in 1997/98, though didn't reach high visibility until around 2000 by way of Opera, Skipstone, and Galeon, from which it was rapidly adopted by Mozilla, which itself grew emphasizing Xul (remember that) until it collapsed and was replaced by a user's one-off, Firefox. Google got into the game with Chrome which seems headed in the apps engine direction (and from which I suspect it will similarly collapse as a Web browser).
For the lightweight document reading and management interface, I suspect we'll see emergence from some of the existing eBook reader / bibliography / online simplification tools. I suspect that sites will start publishing in a simplified format (ePub, Markdown, LaTeX, DocBook, possibly even strict HTML5), which can be rendered to client preferences and in a device- and format-independent manner. Our problem isn't a want of semantic markups, it's running QC over the ones we've got and ensuring people are using them properly. Absent some sort of publishing authority (think along the lines of Debian's package management system) I don't know how this could be enforced. Perhaps adding smarts at the webserver level: "Hey, that document you just loaded, those tags you use, I do not think they mean what you think they mean." A validation step integrated as part of the publishing process.
Or maybe a nudge from search engines (though Google's own craptacular markup in its G+ pages makes me suspect this is wishful thinking). A well-formed, semantically-correct page gets a higher SERP ranking than one that's a clusterfuck. And hey, the SEOs will love me because this gives them yet another contracting/consulting service opportunity. Sigh.
Candidates to grow into this niche on the client side include Calibre, Zotero, Moon+Reader (and other ePub readers), and perhaps some of the generalized reader tools such as Evince and Okular (the GNOME and KDE readers). I'd like to explore the Internet Archive's BookReader as a _local_ client (it's presently oriented at Web content) -- ironically it's actually got vastly better presentation performance than most local readers I've seen. I expect dedicated PDF readers to go the way of the dodo. Pandoc is another tool to keep you eye on. I've played with that recently, with some script glue, to convert an ePub to LaTeX source and then PDF output (still somewhat preferred for local viewing, ePubs still annoy me on Linux desktop). Nothing makes me happy at present, but I'm seeing some glimmers of light.
The apps platform space: some sort of sandbox in which remote apps can play but only in a limited sense. Effectively creating a mobile device environment within the desktop (on mobile, the apps already have their space). Key elements of this will be standardizing on widget sets, state preservation (apps should be immune to having the rug pulled out from under them), and user-controlled privacy controls (lacking in present app and browser models). A data liberation standard would also be very useful, so long as I'm compiling my ideal wishlist. I've got less experience here than elsewhere, and I'm probably missing a lot.
Seeing apps which are functionally oriented rather than site oriented would be a huge plus. The "download our app" annoyance must die yesterday.
On the commercial space, we're already seeing proprietary dedicated ecommerce platforms -- that's what the mobile shopping apps from Apple (iTunes), Google (Play Store), and Amazon (Amazon Marketplace) are, effectively. Each is, of course, a silo. The next step is going to be for someone to come up with a generalized shopping interface which can access any of the back-ends. Google's doing some interesting work here with its Google Shopping Express, and the really interesting element of this would be, IMO, to integrate a few different areas of shopping:
• Information gathering. Essentially, reviews of both merchants and products. A cross between Yelp, Google Reviews, Wikipedia, and Amazon's reviews.
• Merchant info. Often I simply want to go to a physical location and get standard information (hours, available merchandise, service availability for, say, a barbarshop or restaurant or auto shop).
• Stock info. Is X product in stock? This is actually where I think the most interesting aspects may happen, as it could see a tie-in of merchant systems with the rest of the supply chain. As with what I've discussed recently on disintermediating of search, providing local merchants the access to global supply-chain and inventory management which is presently only available to big box stores could be a huge disruptor. It's not an easy problem to solve, but it could be immensely profitable. There's actually a name for this, "Federated Retail": http://instagov.com/wiki/Federated_retail
• Ordering. Requesting a specific item.
• Payment. Note that ordering and payment are separate. I may well want to order online but pay in person.
• Fulfillment / shipping / delivery / pickup. The act of actually getting the thing you want. Note that while delivery to the home may be convenient, it often isn't, and one really useful function a merchant can provide is for warehousing of orders. I actually do special-order products frequently from local merchants (bookstores, hardware stores, clothing stores), especially where seeing, handling, getting fitted, or browsing products is a significant part of the experience. So long as the pick-up location is convenient to my daily habits, walking a few blocks really isn't a big deal. And it's often far more convenient than arranging to be at home at a specific time. At least until such time as homes and residences are constructed with package delivery as a consideration.
• Authentication if necessary. Note that often this isn't a requirement, and, frankly, authenticated deep behavior tracking is a massive turn-off for me on virtually any online shopping experience, and is among the key reasons I avoid online shopping where possible. I'm one of those reverse show-roomers: I'll often research a product on Amazon, then buy it locally.
One of the things I find most interesting about online shopping isn't its size or growth, but the lack of these. For the past several years, online retail has been underperforming growth estimates: http://redd.it/243in1
In 2010, TechCrunch cited Forrester Research predicting 8% of all retail sales by 2014.
From the US Small Business Administration we have "An Analysis of Internet Sales Taxation and the Small Seller Exemption[5] " giving surprisingly low numbers in November, 2013: "According to the U.S. Census Bureau, online sales accounted for approximately 5.3 percent of total retail sales in the second quarter of 2013. While online sales still represent a small share of total sales, they are expected to grow significantly in the future."
http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/08/forrester-forecast-online-r...
http://www.sba.gov/advocacy/7540/758295
For media, as noted, there are a number of existing tools which provide a superior playback experience to browser-embedded players. My main complaint with, e.g., VLC, is that it's unstable (tends to crash), loses playlists, and if playing, say, YouTube content, seems to establish a link to the present instance of the content URL which changes, so that if you're playing with interruptions, you'll lose the source and have to re-queue the original YouTube link to your playlist, which is a bit of a PITA.
In the past, revolutions in browser models didn't happen through evolution of existing browsers so much as their wholesale replacement.
The Web itself supplanted a whole set of proprietary document formats, both static and hypertext, of which Tim O'Reilly has written and spoken about this in talking about the origins of O'Reilly & Associates. His Open Sources essay covers this tangentially, though I think there are better examples I'm not finding at present: http://oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/tim.html
In this regard, it's interesting to point out that the software industry's first attempts to improve on the web interface for active content--technologies like browser-side Java applets and Microsoft ActiveX controls--failed because they were aimed at professional programmers and could not easily be copied and implemented by the amateurs who were building the Web. Vendors viewed the Web in software terms, and didn't understand that the Web was changing not only what applications were being built but what tools their builders needed.
The upshot: HTML wasn't pay-to-play, you weren't locked within a proprietary "ecosystem". It also wasn't subject to the format limitations of postscript and PDF. It's even been backwards-bolted onto existing information infrastructures such as manpages and GNU Info documents via tools such as Debian's dwww:
https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/dwww
And so proprietary doc formats gave way to HTML. Lynx begat Mosaic, which added graphics, then Netscape, which extended graphics and a number of other capabilities, until it fell over under its own bloated mass of bugs and technical debt and birthed Mozilla.
Tabbed browsing came by way of ... um, whatever it was that graced HN a week or so back, in 1997/98, though didn't reach high visibility until around 2000 by way of Opera, Skipstone, and Galeon, from which it was rapidly adopted by Mozilla, which itself grew emphasizing Xul (remember that) until it collapsed and was replaced by a user's one-off, Firefox. Google got into the game with Chrome which seems headed in the apps engine direction (and from which I suspect it will similarly collapse as a Web browser).
For the lightweight document reading and management interface, I suspect we'll see emergence from some of the existing eBook reader / bibliography / online simplification tools. I suspect that sites will start publishing in a simplified format (ePub, Markdown, LaTeX, DocBook, possibly even strict HTML5), which can be rendered to client preferences and in a device- and format-independent manner. Our problem isn't a want of semantic markups, it's running QC over the ones we've got and ensuring people are using them properly. Absent some sort of publishing authority (think along the lines of Debian's package management system) I don't know how this could be enforced. Perhaps adding smarts at the webserver level: "Hey, that document you just loaded, those tags you use, I do not think they mean what you think they mean." A validation step integrated as part of the publishing process.
Or maybe a nudge from search engines (though Google's own craptacular markup in its G+ pages makes me suspect this is wishful thinking). A well-formed, semantically-correct page gets a higher SERP ranking than one that's a clusterfuck. And hey, the SEOs will love me because this gives them yet another contracting/consulting service opportunity. Sigh.
Candidates to grow into this niche on the client side include Calibre, Zotero, Moon+Reader (and other ePub readers), and perhaps some of the generalized reader tools such as Evince and Okular (the GNOME and KDE readers). I'd like to explore the Internet Archive's BookReader as a _local_ client (it's presently oriented at Web content) -- ironically it's actually got vastly better presentation performance than most local readers I've seen. I expect dedicated PDF readers to go the way of the dodo. Pandoc is another tool to keep you eye on. I've played with that recently, with some script glue, to convert an ePub to LaTeX source and then PDF output (still somewhat preferred for local viewing, ePubs still annoy me on Linux desktop). Nothing makes me happy at present, but I'm seeing some glimmers of light.
The apps platform space: some sort of sandbox in which remote apps can play but only in a limited sense. Effectively creating a mobile device environment within the desktop (on mobile, the apps already have their space). Key elements of this will be standardizing on widget sets, state preservation (apps should be immune to having the rug pulled out from under them), and user-controlled privacy controls (lacking in present app and browser models). A data liberation standard would also be very useful, so long as I'm compiling my ideal wishlist. I've got less experience here than elsewhere, and I'm probably missing a lot.
Seeing apps which are functionally oriented rather than site oriented would be a huge plus. The "download our app" annoyance must die yesterday.
On the commercial space, we're already seeing proprietary dedicated ecommerce platforms -- that's what the mobile shopping apps from Apple (iTunes), Google (Play Store), and Amazon (Amazon Marketplace) are, effectively. Each is, of course, a silo. The next step is going to be for someone to come up with a generalized shopping interface which can access any of the back-ends. Google's doing some interesting work here with its Google Shopping Express, and the really interesting element of this would be, IMO, to integrate a few different areas of shopping:
• Information gathering. Essentially, reviews of both merchants and products. A cross between Yelp, Google Reviews, Wikipedia, and Amazon's reviews.
• Merchant info. Often I simply want to go to a physical location and get standard information (hours, available merchandise, service availability for, say, a barbarshop or restaurant or auto shop).
• Stock info. Is X product in stock? This is actually where I think the most interesting aspects may happen, as it could see a tie-in of merchant systems with the rest of the supply chain. As with what I've discussed recently on disintermediating of search, providing local merchants the access to global supply-chain and inventory management which is presently only available to big box stores could be a huge disruptor. It's not an easy problem to solve, but it could be immensely profitable. There's actually a name for this, "Federated Retail": http://instagov.com/wiki/Federated_retail
• Ordering. Requesting a specific item.
• Payment. Note that ordering and payment are separate. I may well want to order online but pay in person.
• Fulfillment / shipping / delivery / pickup. The act of actually getting the thing you want. Note that while delivery to the home may be convenient, it often isn't, and one really useful function a merchant can provide is for warehousing of orders. I actually do special-order products frequently from local merchants (bookstores, hardware stores, clothing stores), especially where seeing, handling, getting fitted, or browsing products is a significant part of the experience. So long as the pick-up location is convenient to my daily habits, walking a few blocks really isn't a big deal. And it's often far more convenient than arranging to be at home at a specific time. At least until such time as homes and residences are constructed with package delivery as a consideration.
• Authentication if necessary. Note that often this isn't a requirement, and, frankly, authenticated deep behavior tracking is a massive turn-off for me on virtually any online shopping experience, and is among the key reasons I avoid online shopping where possible. I'm one of those reverse show-roomers: I'll often research a product on Amazon, then buy it locally.
One of the things I find most interesting about online shopping isn't its size or growth, but the lack of these. For the past several years, online retail has been underperforming growth estimates: http://redd.it/243in1
In 2010, TechCrunch cited Forrester Research predicting 8% of all retail sales by 2014.
From the US Small Business Administration we have "An Analysis of Internet Sales Taxation and the Small Seller Exemption[5] " giving surprisingly low numbers in November, 2013: "According to the U.S. Census Bureau, online sales accounted for approximately 5.3 percent of total retail sales in the second quarter of 2013. While online sales still represent a small share of total sales, they are expected to grow significantly in the future."
http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/08/forrester-forecast-online-r...
http://www.sba.gov/advocacy/7540/758295
For media, as noted, there are a number of existing tools which provide a superior playback experience to browser-embedded players. My main complaint with, e.g., VLC, is that it's unstable (tends to crash), loses playlists, and if playing, say, YouTube content, seems to establish a link to the present instance of the content URL which changes, so that if you're playing with interruptions, you'll lose the source and have to re-queue the original YouTube link to your playlist, which is a bit of a PITA.
> If I could have a tool to 1) remove all styling from a site, 2) reduce it to fundamental semantic markup (and here the HTML5 standard actually does provide a solid framework), and 3) apply my own preferred settings (fonts, margins, font-size, foreground/background colors) to every damned page, with minimal styling allowed, I'd be far happier.
Readability targets that use case.
https://www.readability.com/bookmarklets
Readability targets that use case.
https://www.readability.com/bookmarklets
Yes, and I use it for that, but:
• This requires JS enabled. Which I disable with ScriptSafe, so for a typical site, it's: enable JS, reload site, hit "read now" bookmarklet, pray that it actually opens.
• The page doesn't always render. In too many cases, the site simply fails to provide content to Readability. And since Readability's hidden their "feedback" button, I've got to hunt for that (or email them, which is better, since Readability doesn't provide feedback on feedback, even to the extent of providing an ack of your submission). After a few rough words with the crew I seem to be on better terms with them (and I really do love the tool and concept).
I realize this isn't the sort of thing that can easily be accomplished client-side, though sometimes I think it's still worth trying. People do the stupidest shit with HTML markup.
• This requires JS enabled. Which I disable with ScriptSafe, so for a typical site, it's: enable JS, reload site, hit "read now" bookmarklet, pray that it actually opens.
• The page doesn't always render. In too many cases, the site simply fails to provide content to Readability. And since Readability's hidden their "feedback" button, I've got to hunt for that (or email them, which is better, since Readability doesn't provide feedback on feedback, even to the extent of providing an ack of your submission). After a few rough words with the crew I seem to be on better terms with them (and I really do love the tool and concept).
I realize this isn't the sort of thing that can easily be accomplished client-side, though sometimes I think it's still worth trying. People do the stupidest shit with HTML markup.
I did pretty much the same, but I always hunt for the print-able version of the page. If it's not there, use Readability.
If the output is still garbage, I use UnMHT, select the text / article then 'save as'.
If article's purposely set multi-page, tough luck, no solution to that yet ...
If the output is still garbage, I use UnMHT, select the text / article then 'save as'.
If article's purposely set multi-page, tough luck, no solution to that yet ...
There's the depagination extension on Firefox. I'm not aware of similar for Chrome.
Another that works far too often is:
Or pandoc, which can fetch from URL and output to your specified format (another good way of bypassing craptastic Web formatting). Hrm...
Interesting. I get a TLS error attempting this on HN.
Another that works far too often is:
lynx --dump <url> | less
Or pandoc, which can fetch from URL and output to your specified format (another good way of bypassing craptastic Web formatting). Hrm...
Interesting. I get a TLS error attempting this on HN.
Holy crap, HTML through pandoc is a great solution. Thank you!
You're welcome.
I just discovered that reading through the manpage the other day ;-)
I just discovered that reading through the manpage the other day ;-)
Genuine question: what do you think of FROGANS? https://www.frogans.org/en/main.html
Never heard of it.
What problem, exactly, is this trying to solve?
It seems to be addressed at the popularity of apps. I'm generally not an advocate of site-specific applications. A function-specific app, perhaps. Say, an OpenStreetmap mobile app.
But if you're publishing content what you should focus on is semantic presentation, with a sane default styling, but allowing overrides by the user.
What problem, exactly, is this trying to solve?
It seems to be addressed at the popularity of apps. I'm generally not an advocate of site-specific applications. A function-specific app, perhaps. Say, an OpenStreetmap mobile app.
But if you're publishing content what you should focus on is semantic presentation, with a sane default styling, but allowing overrides by the user.
How does that work with ads, though? Because if it doesn't, it's dead in the water.
I'm not a big fan of ads, I think they're actively perverting content (weaponized clickbait, memes, etc.).
I'd prefer some sort of content syndication scheme / broadband tax, though that's clearly a political, not strictly technical, solution.
Phil Hunt's Broadband Tax proposal: http://redd.it/1vknhc
My Universal Media Payment Syndication idea: http://redd.it/1uotb3
I'd prefer some sort of content syndication scheme / broadband tax, though that's clearly a political, not strictly technical, solution.
Phil Hunt's Broadband Tax proposal: http://redd.it/1vknhc
My Universal Media Payment Syndication idea: http://redd.it/1uotb3
> If I could have a tool to 1) remove all styling from a site, 2) reduce it to fundamental semantic markup (and here the HTML5 standard actually does provide a solid framework), and 3) apply my own preferred settings (fonts, margins, font-size, foreground/background colors) to every damned page, with minimal styling allowed, I'd be far happier.
You might like to read the web in Emacs.
For just reading long articles, it's great.
If you want to read Twitter or Tumblr or whatever, it's got modes for those too, in a nice experience.
You might like to read the web in Emacs.
For just reading long articles, it's great.
If you want to read Twitter or Tumblr or whatever, it's got modes for those too, in a nice experience.
well for 1 & 3, I use firefox. I use 'Option | Content | Colors' excessively :).
For 2, I use Noscript
Those options is the only reason I'm still on FF, plus it's <Alt>+<b> for bookmarks
Those options is the only reason I'm still on FF, plus it's <Alt>+<b> for bookmarks
[deleted]
but then how do steal your clicks and impressions to fund our self-driving drones wifi balloons?
Enter the desire for branding, design, yada yada, and...
[deleted](1)
Almost all of this is still relevant today, except for one part:
> 2. Opening New Browser Windows
> Opening up new browser windows is like a vacuum cleaner sales person who starts a visit by emptying an ash tray on the customer's carpet. Don't pollute my screen with any more windows, thanks (particularly since current operating systems have miserable window management). If I want a new window, I will open it myself!
Nowadays, the bigger problem is on-page modal windows. Current operating systems now have very good window management, and browsers have zero window management, except for the ability to block popup windows[0].
I get very annoyed by websites that break my ability to open links in multiple tabs/windows by right-clicking, or force me to use their built-in modal windows as a substitute for popups.
Most modern Google properties are culprits of this. For example: if you have a website with Google Apps for Business, it is impossible to open most links in new tabs - they force you to use the on-page navigation instead. The only solution is to open a second tab and navigate to the same location.
We became so afraid of popup windows that we've swung too far in the other direction, and are suffering the consequences.
[0] The solution is not to create a window manager for the browser, by the way.
> 2. Opening New Browser Windows
> Opening up new browser windows is like a vacuum cleaner sales person who starts a visit by emptying an ash tray on the customer's carpet. Don't pollute my screen with any more windows, thanks (particularly since current operating systems have miserable window management). If I want a new window, I will open it myself!
Nowadays, the bigger problem is on-page modal windows. Current operating systems now have very good window management, and browsers have zero window management, except for the ability to block popup windows[0].
I get very annoyed by websites that break my ability to open links in multiple tabs/windows by right-clicking, or force me to use their built-in modal windows as a substitute for popups.
Most modern Google properties are culprits of this. For example: if you have a website with Google Apps for Business, it is impossible to open most links in new tabs - they force you to use the on-page navigation instead. The only solution is to open a second tab and navigate to the same location.
We became so afraid of popup windows that we've swung too far in the other direction, and are suffering the consequences.
[0] The solution is not to create a window manager for the browser, by the way.
Any breaking of user-specified window management is bad. Producing pop-ups or new windows/tabs when not requested, or preventing them. The key isn't what the site is doing, it is going against the user's expectations and/or express preferences.
> Producing pop-ups or new windows/tabs when not requested, or preventing them.
Agreed - the common pattern I'm referring to is to have a button that the user clicks on to open a modal window.
This is ridiculously frustrating - it obscures the rest of the page, preventing me from navigating around that page or to other parts of the site without manually opening a new tab.
Occasionally those modal windows let me drag them around slowly with my mouse, but that's really only marginally better. I don't want every website to try and invent its own windowing manager, which is what many try to do.
Agreed - the common pattern I'm referring to is to have a button that the user clicks on to open a modal window.
This is ridiculously frustrating - it obscures the rest of the page, preventing me from navigating around that page or to other parts of the site without manually opening a new tab.
Occasionally those modal windows let me drag them around slowly with my mouse, but that's really only marginally better. I don't want every website to try and invent its own windowing manager, which is what many try to do.
On a related note: It's amazing how miserable many popular "mobile first" "hip/modern" sites are to actually use on a mobile data connection/latency.
The modern web may be pretty, but it feels like general usability it at a low point.
The modern web may be pretty, but it feels like general usability it at a low point.
And the related phenomenon that I've seen more of recently: layouts that try to be mobile friendly, but then have some giant horizontal element sticking way out and ruining the experience.
> some giant horizontal element sticking way out and ruining the experience
And more often than not, this giant horizontal element refuses to scroll down properly and makes the whole page sluggish like hell. You gotta love 2014.
And more often than not, this giant horizontal element refuses to scroll down properly and makes the whole page sluggish like hell. You gotta love 2014.
It varies a lot.
Mobile-only which strictly emphases the content and removes all other distractions can actually be a bonus. I've found some such sites (with appropriate margins restored) to be preferable to many desktop sites.
Mobile sites with lots of gee-wizardry are almost always horrible.
My ideal is actually very close to how TBL's original WWW proposal documents are styled. I have a default "unstyled" stylesheet I apply to most such sites, which consists largely of:
Setting body background to #fffff6, foreground to #330, font size, width to auto, max-width to 50em, and margins to 2em (top/bottom) / 4em (sides).
Setting anchor and heading colors and sizes, and size of standard text elements.
It's a pretty good foundation for fixing a bunch of sites.
Mobile-only which strictly emphases the content and removes all other distractions can actually be a bonus. I've found some such sites (with appropriate margins restored) to be preferable to many desktop sites.
Mobile sites with lots of gee-wizardry are almost always horrible.
My ideal is actually very close to how TBL's original WWW proposal documents are styled. I have a default "unstyled" stylesheet I apply to most such sites, which consists largely of:
Setting body background to #fffff6, foreground to #330, font size, width to auto, max-width to 50em, and margins to 2em (top/bottom) / 4em (sides).
Setting anchor and heading colors and sizes, and size of standard text elements.
It's a pretty good foundation for fixing a bunch of sites.
Is there a firefox extension for applying that stylesheet to pages?
I think Stylish is the most popular one:
Firefox:
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/stylish/
Chrome:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylish/fjnbnpbmke...
Firefox:
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/stylish/
Chrome:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylish/fjnbnpbmke...
Stylish.
Nah, mobile has forced some level of sanity on us, and flat has curbed some of the worst design excesses. The 2008 web was worse for usability (though the 2003 web was probably better).
Interesting viewpoint. Can you provide any examples of 2008 sites that you think were "worse for usability" than their 2014 counterparts?
I cannot think of any myself, but I'm happy to be proved wrong.
I cannot think of any myself, but I'm happy to be proved wrong.
microsoft.com. My bank's website (Halifax). I think Yahoo and Livejournal, though I can't get either to work in the wayback machine to be sure. The content is fairly front and center now, where the 2008 trend was very "boxes in boxes" with lots of rounded corners to show you could. I'm actually struggling to remember what was big in 2008 - I remember Amazon and Ebay kept to a 2003-style design.
In order to create a decent mobile experience, I've tried to reduce the amount of javascript to nothing when I code. It makes you think completely different in terms of design, but the huge upside for a fast desktop and mobile experience is well worth it.
So on point.
The biggest issue with the modern web (IMO) is JS (but mostly JS frameworks). They're just so miserably slow on mobile. Slow to download. Laggy. Supplanting native controls with ones with a noticeable input delay.
It's gone so far as designers interpreting "mobile first" as "your default layout should be the mobile optimized one, and media-queries used to reformat for the desktop".
Why? It makes no difference to a modern smartphone. But it breaks IE8. For no reason. I'd like IE8 to go away as much as the next developer, but I also try not to deliberately break things if I don't have an actual justification. Especially when IE8 is a contracted requirement. It's just plum crazy.
Functional JS can be a great tool. I'm not suggesting it be completely banished. But JS abuse seems to be at an all time high. And to think the "conservative" developers were worried about abuse of AJAX back in the day...
The biggest issue with the modern web (IMO) is JS (but mostly JS frameworks). They're just so miserably slow on mobile. Slow to download. Laggy. Supplanting native controls with ones with a noticeable input delay.
It's gone so far as designers interpreting "mobile first" as "your default layout should be the mobile optimized one, and media-queries used to reformat for the desktop".
Why? It makes no difference to a modern smartphone. But it breaks IE8. For no reason. I'd like IE8 to go away as much as the next developer, but I also try not to deliberately break things if I don't have an actual justification. Especially when IE8 is a contracted requirement. It's just plum crazy.
Functional JS can be a great tool. I'm not suggesting it be completely banished. But JS abuse seems to be at an all time high. And to think the "conservative" developers were worried about abuse of AJAX back in the day...
Websites: breaking my back button for 15 years.
I don't know if I should praise the author's insight or scorn the rest of the world for not moving beyond these mistakes.
I'm just kidding... I know scorn is the right option.
I'm just kidding... I know scorn is the right option.
Maybe because we live in a world where Jakob Nielsen[1] is referred to by the generic "the author." Not a good sign.
No scorn directed at you, just making a point that his myriad work should be ingrained into anyone building for the web.
[1] http://www.nngroup.com/people/jakob-nielsen/
No scorn directed at you, just making a point that his myriad work should be ingrained into anyone building for the web.
[1] http://www.nngroup.com/people/jakob-nielsen/
The picture in that link has the strangest quality - he looks like he's a young person that has undergone some Hollywood makeup magic to make him look older. Maybe it's something about the light or his skin or something that makes my brain assume that someone just dyed a young person's hair grey. Very strange.
"appropriate behavior of these design elements is defined in the Windows Vista User Experience standard"
This isn't from 1999. Something's amiss...
This isn't from 1999. Something's amiss...
Here's the original
http://web.archive.org/web/20000815063033/http://www.useit.c...
In fairness, apart from removing dead links to Amazon books on the likes of Win 98 UI guidelines (probably not a big seller any more) and adding in a handful of internal links to slightly more recent iarticles, it's pretty much untouched. Talk about evergreen content...
In fairness, apart from removing dead links to Amazon books on the likes of Win 98 UI guidelines (probably not a big seller any more) and adding in a handful of internal links to slightly more recent iarticles, it's pretty much untouched. Talk about evergreen content...
Much of it is, though it seems Nielsen's revised this at least somewhat. Hrm...
As notahacker notes, the original text is on the Internet Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20000302210201/http://www.useit.c...
Text: "The appropriate behavior of these design elements is defined in the Windows UI standard, the Macintosh UI standard, and the Java UI standard."
I suspect some sort of search-and-replace.
As notahacker notes, the original text is on the Internet Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20000302210201/http://www.useit.c...
Text: "The appropriate behavior of these design elements is defined in the Windows UI standard, the Macintosh UI standard, and the Java UI standard."
I suspect some sort of search-and-replace.
It's interesting to read that, aside from actual design "mistakes" this article also includes some, I would say, etiquette based suggestions which seem innocence/naive in hindsight. It wasn't too much earlier than this that registering a domain name carried some sort of responsibility to create site that was appropriate for it. Boy, those days are definitely long gone!
Not using link-bait titles, always including a biography,not jumping on buzzwords, etc. This is definitely still fine advice for a quality site. At the time I certainly didn't image the future web would be cluttered with sites doing absolutely anything and everything possible to get clicks and views.
Not using link-bait titles, always including a biography,not jumping on buzzwords, etc. This is definitely still fine advice for a quality site. At the time I certainly didn't image the future web would be cluttered with sites doing absolutely anything and everything possible to get clicks and views.
4. Lack of Biographies
"My first Web studies in 1994 showed that users want to know the people behind information on the Web."
My first Web studies in 1994:
Internet Access
1. Log into Ralph. At the % prompt, type the following: telnet FSCAT.OCLC.ORG and press Return or Enter. FirstSearch responds “You are connected to OCLC Online Reference Services. Enter your authorization.”
2. Enter your FirstSearch authorization number and press Return or Enter. FirstSearch responds, “Enter your password.”
3. Enter your FirstSearch user password and press Return. FirstSearch responds, “Welcome to FirstSearch.” Follow the menus to search any database.
4. Use BYE to log off FirstSearch. Just enter bye and press Enter or Return. FirstSearch asks, “Are you ready to disconnect?”
5. Enter y for yes and press Enter or Return. FirstSearch responds, “You are disconnected.”
6. Disconnect from the Internet using the instructions on your screen.
My first Web studies in 1994:
Internet Access
1. Log into Ralph. At the % prompt, type the following: telnet FSCAT.OCLC.ORG and press Return or Enter. FirstSearch responds “You are connected to OCLC Online Reference Services. Enter your authorization.”
2. Enter your FirstSearch authorization number and press Return or Enter. FirstSearch responds, “Enter your password.”
3. Enter your FirstSearch user password and press Return. FirstSearch responds, “Welcome to FirstSearch.” Follow the menus to search any database.
4. Use BYE to log off FirstSearch. Just enter bye and press Enter or Return. FirstSearch asks, “Are you ready to disconnect?”
5. Enter y for yes and press Enter or Return. FirstSearch responds, “You are disconnected.”
6. Disconnect from the Internet using the instructions on your screen.
Minor addition for 2014:
11) Breaking the scroll behaviour
11) Breaking the scroll behaviour
Scrollbar modifications is a growing gripe of mine.
Even minor stuff. G+, for example, defaults (or defaulted to) to an exceptionally narrow scrollbar, a conspicuous violation of Fitts' law: make your UI control widgets as large as possible to allow for easy access.
I can only surmise that a designer was using Mac OS or another platform in which gesture / multi-touch controls worked around the need for scrollbar access. With a touchpad-disabled, TrackPoint-equipped, mouseless laptop, this was a frequent frustration.
Even minor stuff. G+, for example, defaults (or defaulted to) to an exceptionally narrow scrollbar, a conspicuous violation of Fitts' law: make your UI control widgets as large as possible to allow for easy access.
I can only surmise that a designer was using Mac OS or another platform in which gesture / multi-touch controls worked around the need for scrollbar access. With a touchpad-disabled, TrackPoint-equipped, mouseless laptop, this was a frequent frustration.
Also happens the other way round - just try to scroll at e.g. http://store.y-3.com with a Magic Mouse/Trackpad — Basically impossible since you'll hit the page end just by touching the mouse.
Don't get me started on sites that hijack l/r arrows to navigate between pages on the site rather than align text on page.
Fucking NY Times.
Fucking NY Times.
There are so many mobile sites that have broken scrolling until the entire page is loaded, I almost invariably think Chrome crashed or something until I realise that it's some news site (it is always news websites that have this issue) and its JS.
Even funner are pages where scrolling stops working entirely when the page is fully loaded. As in, I can no longer read the article or zoom. So I have to refresh the page and hit the "stop" button before it finishes loading too much (but enough to have the text on the screen).
Even funner are pages where scrolling stops working entirely when the page is fully loaded. As in, I can no longer read the article or zoom. So I have to refresh the page and hit the "stop" button before it finishes loading too much (but enough to have the text on the screen).
what about text as images?
https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/
https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/
Agreed. I just discovered this add-in to select text out of images: http://projectnaptha.com/
It's currently Chrome-only unfortunately.
It's currently Chrome-only unfortunately.
Hate this with my whole heart. It kills the ability to copy-paste text, or even to mark parts of it (I do that somewhat impulsively while reading; helps with focus and not losing the place you were looking at).
The images there all have ALT tags, so that should be okay. Images comprising only text is (obviously) more bandwidth-heavy, though, so that could be seen as a bit of a mistake. It's not a design mistake though, it's more of a "care about your users" mistake.
No excuse for this now we have webfonts.
Only if you don't care about anti-aliasing.
edit: ...and Kerning, text-flow, font-weight, character maps and other gripes.
edit: ...and Kerning, text-flow, font-weight, character maps and other gripes.
Surely webfonts allow for better anti-aliasing (with sub-pixel rendering), whereas images can only guess how the sub-pixels on your monitor are arranged.
Not always. Different operating systems and browser combos have different ways of rendering fonts. I've seen fonts that look good in OSX in Firefox look poorly in Windows with Firefox (Gentium in my case).
Also these images look like they used gray scale instead of sub-pixel rendering so the differences in pixel geometry should be more or less mitigated.
I'm sure in theory it could look better as actual text for certain setups, but this probably allows them to get the best looking text in the widest amount of configurations.
Also these images look like they used gray scale instead of sub-pixel rendering so the differences in pixel geometry should be more or less mitigated.
I'm sure in theory it could look better as actual text for certain setups, but this probably allows them to get the best looking text in the widest amount of configurations.
Images can be rendered at the subpixel level if they are oversampled (e.g. "retina" image on a non-retina screen). Browsers just don't.
Depending on what country you live in, web fonts can be really annoying. Anything with a web font takes forever to load in China unless you are using a VPN, and either way, it's pretty much an extra round-trip you have to wait for.
I think this can be forgivable when you want to render text perfectly.
I tend to use text as images for logo fonts and banner fonts where you want to ensure the client doesn't render it in some weird way.
I tend to use text as images for logo fonts and banner fonts where you want to ensure the client doesn't render it in some weird way.
And sites which prevent to select text and disable the right mouse button or stuff like that. Heretics!
Regarding #5 "Lack of Archives," it seems like most modern sites commit a sin that's nearly as bad: lack of reachable archives. At some point the Web collectively decided that The Blog was the one true format for information delivery, and now everything is presented backwards and you need to click "previous" a hundred million times to see last year's posts.
It's especially maddening when people try to use sites like Tumblr for webcomics and serial fiction.
It's especially maddening when people try to use sites like Tumblr for webcomics and serial fiction.
Tumblr is an interesting case of optimizing for content creator experience and seriously neglecting many blatant issues with content consumer experience
I tend to see the past 10 years or so of the Web as a great irony for accessibility. It looked like finally a gospel to blind users who could get a nicely structured textual information. In reality, so many websites are simply broken to them with Flash and prevalent DOM manipulation. And every time something good happens (like use of CSS to separate content), something horrible is newly introduced or abused on the other side of the planet.
This article has enlightened me about opening browser new windows. Forgive me father, for I have sinned.
This was all the rage before popup blockers and tabs!
The mailto one is invalid. There's nothing wrong or unexpected about URLs having different URI schemes than http or https. In fact you can configure the browser to send mailto: links to your email website instead of launching an application.
There's nothing wrong with linking different schemes as long as the user is expecting it. Most users click links without first examining the URL and the default assumption is that a link points to another page. If you say "click here to email me" or if the link text is an email address or whatever then, yeah, they'll expect a mailto. But if you don't get specific indicators like that, the user will tend to be surprised when their email is suddenly opening, especially if this involves opening Outlook or such, and it's not a good experience to unexpectedly be looking at the "compose new email" window.
If only the web stayed declarative...
Not using labels with radio and checkbox input elements could be on that list again.
[deleted]
Plus ça change...
A lot of them are still valid.
• A reading app. Styled on ePub readers, services such as Readability / Instapaper / Pocket, or bibliographic tools (which serve to manage content for searchability client-side). Inclusive of forums-oriented software and feed-reading.
• An applications platform. Preferably with a consistent set of widgets (one of the key failures of present Web design).
• An e-commerce platform, with payment and security features integrated.
• Free-standing media playback tools (already substantively extant).
http://redd.it/256lxu
Web design is not the solution. Web design is the problem.
If I could have a tool to 1) remove all styling from a site, 2) reduce it to fundamental semantic markup (and here the HTML5 standard actually does provide a solid framework), and 3) apply my own preferred settings (fonts, margins, font-size, foreground/background colors) to every damned page, with minimal styling allowed, I'd be far happier.