Craigslist has competition. However, it works really well, loads very fast, and makes a lot of money. There's no motivation, then, to make the UX "better."
No motivation? How about not making your users miserable?
They'd make me miserable if they ever abandoned it. I love their functional, predictable, useful, uncomplicated design. It does exactly what it needs to and nothing more. I never feel like anyone is trying to coerce me into their way of looking at the world; it's just a classified-ads database.
Craiglist, because of its age, is interestingly built on Perl[1] and four years ago brought on Perl's founder, Larry Wall.[2] [1] https://www.craigslist.org/about/thanks (CL tech stack) [2] http://blog.craigslist.org/2013/10/15/artist-formerly-known/
Craigslist are so quiet about their tech; I'm surprised there's even that much. I'd love to hear their opinions on operating some of those things at scale, given that their problems are likely much more like those of the average CRUD-y SaaS business (scaled up) than they are like those of e.g. Twitter or Facebook, who have to care about things like "realtime demand-based geographic read-only partial replication of ev…
I believe this based on a thing I think I read a long time ago, but isn't all of CL's tech focused solely on preventing any indexing of the site? It's no wonder they would keep it quiet.
Overall, most press/journalism sites I use are terrible. Performance stinks, flash everywhere, ads that nobody clicks on. Horrible.
It kind of blows my mind that even real, serious journalism outlets cheapen their product like this (nearing the mid-2000s music lyrics website threshold). Got a NYT digital subscription to see if it was worth it, and I like it. Would be more likely to keep going if it extended to other publishers, and I could consistently access an ad-free, ad-blocker gate free experience.
Craigslist is one of the best pages on the internet. It's functional, it loads fast, it doesn't have a stack built of buzzwords and bullshit. It works on every device everywhere. I mean, what business does a page have being megabytes and megabytes if it's gonna display a couple bytes of text? None. It doesn't matter if it's "technically free" these days, that's just bad design and engineering.
Craiglist design actually sucks. When I first used it, the whole thing was almost revolting from design perspective. Where some people see simplicity, others see utter lack of modernity, friendliness and affordability. I still can't get some of my relative to use it (they ask me to post on their behalf!). Before you cite page counts, revenues and unique users, think about how many people are not using it despite the…
I like websites that don't change. I can come back to Craigslist once or twice a year, year after year, and it's exactly what I remembered. No hunting around, no discovering new gestures and behaviors. It's simple, obvious, and it for what it does, it works.
Forbes is unequivocally the worst website I have the displeasure of being linked to on a regular basis. Readability is quickly approaching 0. This page kept hijacking my scroll thru the article to keep an ad at the top of my window. Horrible, horrible, horrible.
Forbes is unequivocally the worst website I have the displeasure of being linked to on a regular basis. Readability is quickly approaching 0. This page kept hijacking my scroll thru the article to keep an ad at the top of my window. Horrible, horrible, horrible.
Honestly. I despise clicking on Forbes.com for this ad spam.
Forbes is the one known for saying "Stop the Ad Blocker" then serving Pop Under Malware:
Airplane travel is a good example where you just end up chasing the dragon. You start by wanting to make enough money to take a trip every once in a while. Then the cheapest economy class tickets aren't good enough - start making more money, and you just buy a ticket, no need to spend an hour finding that perfect ticket. Then economy class isn't good enough, so you get business class seats. Then you get lounge access…
I like to say (not sure if it's original or not), "anyone who says 'money doesn't buy happiness' has never traveled First Class". I got bumped into FC once, and it. was. amazing. Especially on a long haul flight, you actively enjoy the time spent there.
I remember my first time in international First Class. A very spacious seat. Personal service. Continuous champagne, caviar, goose-liver pate, Godiva chocolates, etc, etc, etc. All on linen with silver silverware. Since then, I've flown first class a number of times. Most recently, a friend offered me a "free" upgrade certificate for a flight from Heathrow to Chicago. After fees and taxes, it would have cost me $100. I declined. Been there. Done that. I rationalized that after the trip was over the jet-lag was gone and the flight was just a blurred memory, I'd rather have the $100.
Forbes is unequivocally the worst website I have the displeasure of being linked to on a regular basis. Readability is quickly approaching 0. This page kept hijacking my scroll thru the article to keep an ad at the top of my window. Horrible, horrible, horrible.
I honestly don't even bother anymore: https://outline.com/xX7xe3
Forbes is unequivocally the worst website I have the displeasure of being linked to on a regular basis. Readability is quickly approaching 0. This page kept hijacking my scroll thru the article to keep an ad at the top of my window. Horrible, horrible, horrible.
Firefox + NoScript + Reader View seems to help
tho I used uBlock to forbid 'weird' stuff
ah I've set my UI to always use my colors :D white over black background