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Ask HN: What are the websites that you rely on but have horrible UI?

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41–50 of 149 posts

Re: Ask HN: What are the websites that you rely on but have horrible UI?

#41
post #33
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is horrible about it? It doesn't get in your way and allows you to post quickly. This is the only place I've engaged in online conversation for years and that's because it's just so quick and simple. Compared to forums and commenting on blogs & entering captcha's it's very usable!

Take a look at your settings page sometime. Would you have any idea what notifo, showdead, noprocrast, maxvisit, minaway, and delay meant if you didn't look them up or goof around until you figure out what they do?

I haven't really looked at them no - I guess I haven't needed to because it just works?

Re: Ask HN: What are the websites that you rely on but have horrible UI?

#42
Spires (http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/) is a difficult search box to use. Everyone I know uses the "Easy Search" option on that page. It's just my hunch, but if you need to have a non-default "easy" option for searching, you're probably doing it wrong.

However, the info aggregation at Spires is amazing and it's more or less an essential tool in High Energy Physics.

Re: Ask HN: What are the websites that you rely on but have horrible UI?

#43
post #21
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is horrible about it? It doesn't get in your way and allows you to post quickly. This is the only place I've engaged in online conversation for years and that's because it's just so quick and simple. Compared to forums and commenting on blogs & entering captcha's it's very usable!

Have you ever tried using HN on a mobile device? I've been tempted to hack up yet another iOS app for HN, but A. I don't have the time to do it in what i would call the Right Way(tm) -- or a Hacked-Up Way(tm) either and B. it would really be better off as a separate style than a separate app.

Yes. I have a Nokia E51, it's just a standard T9 phone with wifi / 3g, as I don't need anything fancy. I've loaded HN on it and can skim the articles for anything interesting when I'm out and about. True I wouldn't write a comment, but it works fine for me for what I need.

Re: Ask HN: What are the websites that you rely on but have horrible UI?

#44
post #26
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is horrible about it? It doesn't get in your way and allows you to post quickly. This is the only place I've engaged in online conversation for years and that's because it's just so quick and simple. Compared to forums and commenting on blogs & entering captcha's it's very usable!

How often have you mis-clicked on an down arrow instead of an up arrow (or vice versa)? Have you ever asked someone who's not a regular to upvote something? That's obviously not something that should be done (but I guess we all sin sometimes... call it a wild unruly youth), but if you do, you'll find that most people don't even see the voting arrows, let alone figure out what they mean. If advanced users still make f…

I can use my mouse, I haven't managed to misclick once.

Re: Ask HN: What are the websites that you rely on but have horrible UI?

#45
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is horrible about it? It doesn't get in your way and allows you to post quickly. This is the only place I've engaged in online conversation for years and that's because it's just so quick and simple. Compared to forums and commenting on blogs & entering captcha's it's very usable!

I like most of the HN interface. The one part I really hate is that when you click the Reply button, most of the context you are replying to, excepting only the direct parent comment, disappears. This is really irritating, and HN is the ONLY site that I visit that does this.

I would agree on that point. Yes, that is my one annoyance.

Re: Ask HN: What are the websites that you rely on but have horrible UI?

#46
post #14

All the banking sites I have used have highly unusable UI. The same with my mobile and broadband service provider websites. Sometimes it is just not about the UI. I can live without the best looking websites, but if the functionality is equally broken as the UI, then it is really frustrating. One of my biggest pet peeves is the back button not working in many websites. Many systems just tell you to log in again and i…

This.

Another thing that gets to me is trying to check my credit card balance on the Bank of America "Mobile Site". The only number it will show me is the sum of the transactions that have cleared - it's impossible to see my "available credit" (or the information necessary to figure it out) which is probably the only thing I would ever care about on the mobile site.

Of course my completely unscientific tests seem to indicate that the standard, non-mobile site is significantly faster than the mobile one on my N1 in any case... So I'm stuck using that atrocity instead.

Oh, and don't forget Bank of America's Android/iPhone apps, which, last I checked, were just WebViews around their website.

Re: Ask HN: What are the websites that you rely on but have horrible UI?

#47
post #14

All the banking sites I have used have highly unusable UI. The same with my mobile and broadband service provider websites. Sometimes it is just not about the UI. I can live without the best looking websites, but if the functionality is equally broken as the UI, then it is really frustrating. One of my biggest pet peeves is the back button not working in many websites. Many systems just tell you to log in again and i…

Oh god - don't get me started. I have one that enforces a crazily long password and then asks you for characters taken at specific locations from this password. Which means that every time I log in I either end up scribbling down my password on a bit of paper or typing it into an editor window. I refuse to believe this actually improves the level of security.

You could use Wells Fargo instead - they limit you to 14 characters, which isn't even what I would consider a medium length password.

Re: Ask HN: What are the websites that you rely on but have horrible UI?

#49
post #21
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is horrible about it? It doesn't get in your way and allows you to post quickly. This is the only place I've engaged in online conversation for years and that's because it's just so quick and simple. Compared to forums and commenting on blogs & entering captcha's it's very usable!

Have you ever tried using HN on a mobile device? I've been tempted to hack up yet another iOS app for HN, but A. I don't have the time to do it in what i would call the Right Way(tm) -- or a Hacked-Up Way(tm) either and B. it would really be better off as a separate style than a separate app.

I use http://ihackernews.com for mobile and it is very readable. The same developer wrote ViewText, which is a nice readability bookmarklet.

Re: Ask HN: What are the websites that you rely on but have horrible UI?

#50
post #12

GoDaddy. I was going to cite some specific examples but really the entire site is a perfect case study for bad UI. On the other hand, it is extremely well optimized for revenue (but that's a different discussion).

I hate when I have to do anything on Godaddy. It might be optimized for revenue, but I find the added steps so they can upsell very annoying. I've been using namecheap a lot more lately and their UI is not much better, but I'm able to do what I need to do much faster.

It would be nice if GoDaddy had an option for your account like: "I'm never ever going to buy a shopping cart, or email addresses, or any of that other stuff from you, just take me right to the payment page, please."
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