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Website mistakes that are easily fixed

hanselman.com

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Re: Website mistakes that are easily fixed

#41

Post by scottbruin »

mwcampbell wrote: post #30

I'm glad I'm not the only one who's anal about redirecting to the canonical host name. Now, let the bike-shedding begin: should the canonical host name be www.foo.com or foo.com?

It should be www., generally, unless you're a huge site and then you can do whatever you want (cf. Twitter)

The reason I say this is for smaller operators who may not be running multicast'ed servers in 3+ geographical areas, then you'll probably want most of your traffic pointing to a CNAME of a CDN or at least a cloud-hosted load balancer.

Re: Website mistakes that are easily fixed

#42

Post by SkyMarshal »

Domenic_S wrote: post #20

Here's one he missed: your "country" dropdown has a list of every country in existence, alphabetically. So for the US you have to scroll down to near the end of the list past hundreds of other countries. Instead, put your audience up top (Canada, US, GB maybe) and then alphabetically list the rest.

I've also found it helps to use a divider to separate your audience section from the rest. If you just lump them together with US at the top you're more likely to get grumblings about "US-centric" this or that, but the divider helps communicate "this is our expected audience and we're making it easier for them, but we're inclusive of everyone else below as well".

Re: Website mistakes that are easily fixed

#43

Post by tfountain »

Domenic_S wrote: post #20

Here's one he missed: your "country" dropdown has a list of every country in existence, alphabetically. So for the US you have to scroll down to near the end of the list past hundreds of other countries. Instead, put your audience up top (Canada, US, GB maybe) and then alphabetically list the rest.

Actually the solution you're suggesting is one of my pet hates. An alphabetical list of countries should be alphabetical! If you put some countries out of order you just make it more difficult for people to find their country if theirs isn't the one pre-selected.

If your audience is mainly US, then by all means pre-select the US, but keep the list alphabetical. If your audience isn't mainly in one country, either don't select anything, or for extra bonus points, do a Geo IP lookup and pre-select the country they're in.

Re: Website mistakes that are easily fixed

#44

Post by lukifer »

gallerytungsten wrote: post #33

I'm really annoyed by those sites that insist on having a non-removable top bar overlaying the text. Because they break the page-down key. You page down, but part of the unread text scoots under the top bar. Arrrg.

Bootstrap helped popularize this pattern, and I don't think it's been good for the web. It also steals valuable screen real estate for tiny laptops, like the 11" Air.

Re: Website mistakes that are easily fixed

#45

Post by Semiapies »

Domenic_S wrote: post #20

Here's one he missed: your "country" dropdown has a list of every country in existence, alphabetically. So for the US you have to scroll down to near the end of the list past hundreds of other countries. Instead, put your audience up top (Canada, US, GB maybe) and then alphabetically list the rest.

I've gotten good use out of this script: http://baymard.com/labs/country-selector

Populate it with the data on names and alternates and priority, and it knows gets you to a short list with "un" (with "United States" first), while also offering Germany for "deu" or the United Kingdom for "bri".

It solved so many hassles for a client's internal online ordering system. Beautiful work, really.

Re: Website mistakes that are easily fixed

#46

Post by lukifer »

mwcampbell wrote: post #30

I'm glad I'm not the only one who's anal about redirecting to the canonical host name. Now, let the bike-shedding begin: should the canonical host name be www.foo.com or foo.com?

I say "www." needs to die in a fire. It's ugly and pointless, and doesn't stop you from using other subdomains if you want them.

Re: Website mistakes that are easily fixed

#47

Post by jakub_g »

jakub_g wrote: post #28

I particularly hate when someone does things like (1) when it should be so I can't middle click it or Ctrl-click it to open in a new tab. Even worse if there's (2) href="#" added, which upon middle click will happily load the page I'm currently on inside the new tab. I have an extension in Firefox which changes the mouse cursor for (1) from pointer (hand), so I can easily distinguish that case, I hope this became a W…

*should have been

Re: Website mistakes that are easily fixed

#48

Post by yareally »

I didn't see it listed so far, but checkout forms that require you to select the type of credit card you have. Since the card (Mastercard, Visa, Discover, AMEX) can be determined by the first digit.

I don't see too many sites that require something like this anymore, but every now and then one pops up.

Re: Website mistakes that are easily fixed

#49

Post by jakub_g »

gallerytungsten wrote: post #33

I'm really annoyed by those sites that insist on having a non-removable top bar overlaying the text. Because they break the page-down key. You page down, but part of the unread text scoots under the top bar. Arrrg.

When you connect this with the usage of Zoom Text Only option in Firefox, due to zoom (bigger text) + an overflow (if divs do not fit any longer within the parent width) the top bar can take substantial part of the screen on desktop also. Quite annoying indeed.

Re: Website mistakes that are easily fixed

#50

Post by jakub_g »

One more thing that's been getting a lot of traction recently is CSS transitions. Some devs are using them for hell everything, because they can. When it's too much of it, it feels like old shiny GIFs whenever you change the zoom level of the text.

I've saved in bookmarks one page that made my eyes bleed due to it, but I don't have access to it right now. Stay tuned, I'll post it on Monday :)

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