I love that the default city is based on location.
defaults to SF for me. closest airport to me on their list is IAD, but it is ~6 hours away.
The new VirginAmerica.com
141–150 of 161 posts
Re: The new VirginAmerica.com
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, you're right. It should definitely be built in Shockwave Flash instead, which is even newer and shinier than JavaScript.
Flash as a technology is a caveman compared to modern Javascript-based technologies. There is no audience that does not have JS enabled -- other than the fringe who would probably be better off using wget to browse the internet.
We said exactly the same things about Flash not so many years ago, including the pretentious dismissal of anyone who would dare not support the technology we wanted to use. Before that (and to some extent even now) it was operating systems: what kind of hippie doesn't run Windows, after all? It's pretty easy to justify technical decisions by pigeonholing anyone not using our same platform as The Kind Of People who we don't want giving us money anyway.
There are quite a few comments here complaining about the gaudy unusable interface produced by "modern JavaScript-based techniques", which in this case appear to provide virtually nothing that static HTML and CSS can't do. The dev team was lazy and wanted to show off, and screw anyone who doesn't think running gobs of arbitrary code should be a necessity for buying a ticket.
And for what it's worth my non-developer artist girlfriend has been using noscript for longer than I have. I'll let her know what modern devs think of her, though I don't think she's heard of wget.
Re: The new VirginAmerica.com
#143Why is the password limited to 16 characters long? I don't understand this limitation on any of the sites.
The password length should be limited to something . 16 characters is rather short, though. (Still better than my old webmail, at exactly 6 characters, only uppercase and numbers)
I don't see any reason to ever limit passwords to less than 100 characters.
Re: The new VirginAmerica.com
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well we're seeing it more often in UI/UX because "forced creative vision" aka "design dictatorship" is more popular and acceptable for designers these days. Especially new designers who don't want to stick to the tried and true rules of design (nor learn them), nor base their designs off of some kind of metrics or best practices statistics. Steve Jobs culminated this attitude through his "I'll tell the user what they…
> Steve Jobs culminated this attitude through his "I'll tell the user what they want" philosophy. Apparently users like being told what they want
Maybe. But correlation does not imply causation. Users like beautiful quality products that also function as status symbols. They like when the choices have been made for them so they don't have to walk around Best Buy for 2 hours trying to narrow down which laptop they want out of 30 others. But not necessarily someone ignoring their needs and replacing them with his own.
Re: The new VirginAmerica.com
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having tried the new virginamerica.com site just now, I don't really see a big difference between their site and anyone else's. Having booked through a lot of different airline sites over the last 15 years, I want to say that the differences between airline sites were much greater in the early web years. All the airline sites seemed to have converged to a common model. They all follow exactly the same flow: pick citi…
"Trying to book a flight on any Brazilian airline is impossible unless you're Brazilian" I'm a UK citizen and recently booked and flew on an internal Brazilian flight. I used my UK passport number in the slot for the Brazilian identity number, there were no problems at all.
There may have been updates to the airline sites due to the World Cup but the sentiment many people have expressed as to the difficulty of getting a flight as a foreigner is long-standing.
What airline did you use, btw?
Re: The new VirginAmerica.com
#146This is good time to mention that scrolling is the bane of all things usable, and the person who invented it should be shot. If I wanted to lose context of my operations I would hire some guy to scream in my ear every few seconds, it would be less annoying. Scrolling uis clearly tailored to touch devices like this one really should be an available alternative, not the only interface.
Wow. Are you kidding? "Scrolling" is the bane of all things usable? Short of clicking on things, scrolling is probably the single most familiar and universal interaction on any computer of any form factor. Not sure how scrolling necessitates loss of context nor how not-scrolling maintains context. The two are causally unrelated.
I think he/she is referring to the fact that the site scrolls for you (i.e. scroll hijacking), not the action of scrolling (by users).
When a site scrolls for you, it can cause you to lose context (as what you just did is no longer on the page). I feel like a more apt term might be slideshow design?
Re: The new VirginAmerica.com
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having tried the new virginamerica.com site just now, I don't really see a big difference between their site and anyone else's. Having booked through a lot of different airline sites over the last 15 years, I want to say that the differences between airline sites were much greater in the early web years. All the airline sites seemed to have converged to a common model. They all follow exactly the same flow: pick citi…
"Trying to book a flight on any Brazilian airline is impossible unless you're Brazilian" I'm a UK citizen and recently booked and flew on an internal Brazilian flight. I used my UK passport number in the slot for the Brazilian identity number, there were no problems at all.
How about booking with the identity number 0?
Re: The new VirginAmerica.com
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
The password length should be limited to something . 16 characters is rather short, though. (Still better than my old webmail, at exactly 6 characters, only uppercase and numbers)
I don't see any reason to ever limit passwords to less than 100 characters.
Agreed.
Re: The new VirginAmerica.com
#149Yet another "made for mobile" site. I hate these. Huge font sizes, massive images, wide margins surrounding all elements, wasted space everywhere, floating header obscuring the content. Ugh.
Re: The new VirginAmerica.com
#150The scrolljacking really makes for a terrible UI/UX. Designers: why is this something we're seeing more often? What is the main benefit?
It's a multi-page slideshow with vertical transitions, not a single scrollable page. Main benefit is that you can design in full pages, and you don't have to care about how it looks mid-page. Also, it makes animations and 'on page'-interactions possible. It actually works pretty well once (and if) you get used to it. I guess it could be a bit nauseating for people who have become one with the mouse wheel.
> I guess it could be a bit nauseating for people who have become one with the mouse wheel.
Those were my feelings exactly. It feels much more natural to be able to scroll the part of the page you're interested in to whatever part of the monitor is most comfortable for viewing. Also, this prevents you from quickly scrolling down to a lower section of the page.