JS conflicts (as described)? Today? Really?
Yeah, that whole section read like something from 2002 to me as well.
Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015
31–40 of 56 posts
Re: Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015
#32"A long web page means you have failed to organize your site properly." I think this is outdated. Longer homepages—ones that scroll down and appropriately present the content with good flow, organization, and spacing—are just fine. The Docker homepage[1], for example, is not afraid of the scroll bar. I only bring this up because I think the opposite idea of trying to cram everything above the fold or spread it out ac…
I totally agree. Long homepages is a good example of how much what is considered good web design has changed since 1994. I remember making lots of micro-pages, submenus and subsubmenus for even the smallest sites, to avoid scrolling on small 15" CRT screens in 1995. JavaScript was considered really bad practice until Gmail was launched in 2005 and jQuery in 2006. So there was no dropdown menus, unless you used applet…
Maps is what changed the game on JS to me. It was magic what they did. And then Gmail came and leveled it up again.
I still remember a great Joel on Software article where Spolsky talks about "things that just aren't possible on the web" like red underlines for misspelled words. We get that now from the browser in text controls, but even if we didn't, it would be pretty trivial.
Progress!
Re: Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
I totally agree. Long homepages is a good example of how much what is considered good web design has changed since 1994. I remember making lots of micro-pages, submenus and subsubmenus for even the smallest sites, to avoid scrolling on small 15" CRT screens in 1995. JavaScript was considered really bad practice until Gmail was launched in 2005 and jQuery in 2006. So there was no dropdown menus, unless you used applet…
You don't need JS or applets for dropdowns.
You did back then.
Re: Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need JS or applets for dropdowns.
You did back then.
Javascript was very popular for drop-down menu ever since Netscape Navigator 2 and IE 3 (DHTML).
Java applets were a lot less common. Macromedia's Flash 5/MX took over that Java applet marketshare around 2000.
Re: Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015
#35I agree with most of these, but as others have noted, the comments about JS are out of date. I'd like to nominate as an honorable mention "giant popover that tries to get you to subscribe to the newsletter/install the app before you've even seen the site.", because that's not happening with me. Ever.
I don't think the comments about JS are out of date at all. I use NoScript and it breaks a shocking number of pages that are serving essentially static content that shouldn't require Javascript.
Re: Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I personally hate such design - what's the point of having a 24" monitor when the web page looks like it's optimized for mobile/tablet anyway?
Why would you say that? That website is firmly optimised for large screens, certainly not phones. It’s not even a little bit responsive. And it still manages to have too long line-lengths (though I do like it’s hierarchy and use of white space).
The information density (text/meaningful graphics per square inch) is very low - most of the space is unused, the text is large etc. I assumed that, on smaller screens, the page would be laid out so that there's less wasted space...
Re: Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015
#37I agree with most of these, but as others have noted, the comments about JS are out of date. I'd like to nominate as an honorable mention "giant popover that tries to get you to subscribe to the newsletter/install the app before you've even seen the site.", because that's not happening with me. Ever.
I wonder why bugging someone with a big modal has gotten so popular, I still think doing that leads to less engagement.
Re: Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015
#38#1 for me: anchor text containing the word 'here'. Bonus points for 'click here'
This isn't so bad if it's embedded in a sentence explaining where "here" is. It can help in paragraphs where redundant information just clutters things up.
Re: Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015
#39They could have a search bar. That would be a nice design decision since it should be easy to get to a certain article or website.
Re: Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015
#40I think this particular site (Hacker News) is really bad when considering contrast. Just look at this comment after a while.
When scrolling down for a while, i find it hard to see if a comment is as the top level (no parent)