Every few years, Jakob Nielsen takes websites to task with a Top Ten Web Design Mistakes article. Although things have clearly improved since the original 1996 list, I'm particularly concerned that in the competitive frenzy to get all JavaScripted up for Web 2.0, we may be defeating the very simplicity that made the web so popular. Nielsen shares this concern:
I’m not so sure about the Back button thing. You can’t do that in desktop apps, and everyone’s fine with that. I agree that it violates the web standard, but then again Windows violated the command line standard and everyone’s fine with that too.
Maybe I’m biased because my AJAX apps are database operational things where going back is likely incorrect because it’s not as if going back undoes some transaction that was committed, so the state isn’t reverted but the UI is. In those cases, back is actually misleading and dangerous.
Any ideas on how back should be implemented in cases like these?
At this moment, I’m typing a response into a fixed width and height window that popped up when I clicked on the “Comments” link.
Yeah yeah. Blame Movable Type, not me. But I think I can modify the page template so the javascript open doesn’t restrict the window.
By the way, that “Awful” web page is AUSOME!
It’s the classic “bad web design” parody page, she’s probably not the original author of the parody… or is she?
not as if going back undoes some transaction that was committed
Sure, and it works this way on the web, too. If I click the “back” button after buying a book on Amazon, I don’t have the expectation that the book is magically un-bought. What we mean is that the UI should be correct in either case. It should ALWAYS be safe to go back. Nothing should break.
I’m not so sure about the Back button thing. You can’t do that in desktop apps, and everyone’s fine with that.
Sure you can. Fire up Windows Explorer, browse through a few directories, then click the back button (either on the toolbar, or BACKSPACE, or the mouse back button). This metaphor is a lot more pervasive in Vista as well.
They’ve pretty much recreated the Windows 95 GUI in AJAX … with a bit of work maybe they could even get it to XP level. Seems pretty responsive as well.
AJAX and the so call “Web 2.0” have a place and a promising future. The only problem is that we will have to put up with all of these sites that decided to use “AJAX for the sake of AJAX”.
http://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/ suffers from some of the same problems you listed. The drop-down menus don’t work in Firefox, and the pages take forever to load (and I do mean a long time). They are hundred of mini-articles with large graphics all on one page. Bad for speed, and bad for SEO.
In this year’s list, item 9 is “Frozen Layouts with Fixed Page Widths.” The last part of this section says:
The very worst offenders are sites that freeze both the width and height of the viewport when displaying information in a pop-up window. Pop-ups are a mistake in their own right. If you must use them, don’t force users to read in a tiny peephole. At an absolute minimum, let users resize any new windows.
At this moment, I’m typing a response into a fixed width and height window that popped up when I clicked on the “Comments” link.
Oops.
Other than that, this is an awesome post, because I too am sooooo whipped by the “isn’t this k3wl?” crowd.
How about we never say “Web 2.0” again, because it’s just a marketing fad? Nothing’s changed.
What’s not new:
JavaScript
CSS
XML/DOM
XHTML
MVC
Blogs
Wikis
Breaking people’s browsers
What’s new:
The word “Web 2.0”
The word “AJAX”
“Web 2.0”/“AJAX” is 2005’s excuse to annoy users. We’ve dealt with frames, we’ve dealt with Flash, Java applets are out, bad JavaScript use must go too.
Web sites should be completely functional when a user disables CSS and JavaScript.
Well, but that’s not really the point, is it? it’s more that there are plenty of alternative browsing devices out there that either don’t support JS/CSS or don’t have it implemented 'cos it wouldn’t make sense. The W3Schools site’s stats show somewhere around 10% of www browsers have JS off for some reason or another. YMMV, I’m sure. shrug
Regardless, it would indeed be cool if web apps were more focused on people and less focused on TEK! TEK!! TEK!!!, but, well, that’s a bit large of a discussion to start here…
I, for one, am nearly reaching the point that I want to turn of JS because of the annoy factor. I won’t, because many sites won’t “degrade gracefully”.
Blind or motorically disabled people, for two and three, have no use for CSS and JS.
Mobile phone-using people for four.
Ultra-paranoid JavaScript-distrusting people for five.
While not inherently disagreeing with usability standards, or with Mr. Nielsen’s vision of the web as front end to a very large database, I question the notion that all web sites serve the same purpose and should therefore be built with a single methodology in mind.
Clearly a commercial storefront like Amazon should degrade gracefully, catering to the broadest spectrum of users possible. After all, all those blind and physically disabled users surfing on their mobile phones have money to spend like anyone else Same could be said for a search engine, etc… Even so, risks must be taken as the boundaries of web design are not only unknown, but liquid.
Let’s not make the assumption that the web as it exists today is “how it was meant to be” The so-called conventions of today are not the only ones possible, and quite frankly, aren’t necessarily the best examples of interaction design.
While the web is a data driven structure, by no means is it a database. Its a visual behavioral medium as much as it is a system for information retrieval. Promotional websites for movies (for example) notoriously break usability conventions for what they are.
Same could be said for a search engine, etc… Even so, risks must be taken as the boundaries of web design are not only unknown, but liquid.