Posts matching tags 'usability'
2004/9/20
Annoying web interface of the day: Loot.
This is a UK-based classified advertising site, offering listings of real estate, items for sale, personals and so on. Which is all very well, except that some genius had the brilliant idea of not using ordinary web links for ads, but instead doing it all in Javascript. When you click on an ad, it executes a piece of javascript which changes the current window's location for you. This means that it is impossible to open an ad in a separate window or tab; you can only view Loot in one window at a time, linearly going from ad to ad and backtracking as need be.
I have no idea why anybody could have thought that sort of user-hostile web design is a good idea. It's not to encourage people to pay (paid users get the same interface), it doesn't give the site a slick, Gmail-like interface (it's just a normal web site, except that you can't easily view more than one thing at a time), or otherwise contribute to the user experience (unless, perhaps, the user is a submissive masochist), it doesn't even seem to aim for the holy grail of Protecting Valuable Intellectual Property. The only possibilities I can think of are: (a) that they were betting that, by slowing down user browsing of their site, they could eke more time-limited ad-viewing tokens out of their users, and that no competing website would steal their customers by offering a less annoying experience, or (b) that whoever designed it just wanted to show off their web kung fu ("Look mum, Javascript!")
2004/2/14
I'm Wayne Kerr, and if there's one thing I hate... it's web sites which sacrifice usability to be "arty". Such as the ACMI site. I went to book a ticket to one of the Cremaster screenings, but there's no indication of where the box office is; the only links are lower-case verbs like "experience", "learn", "play" and so on. Ooh, tres artistique! Now about that ticket I wanted to buy...
2003/8/19
An interview with Richard M. Stallman, the head of the Free Software Foundation. In it he states his opposition to the Intel/Microsoft "Trusted Computing" system (or "Treacherous Computing", as he calls it), calls for web browsers to automatically send complaints to webmasters about Flash-based web pages (which, when you think about it, is not such a bad idea), and reveals that Debian has fallen out of favour because they tolerate the existence of a ghetto of non-free software. As well as the usual broadside at the Open Source movement (who, in rms's view, have more in common ideologically with Microsoft than with the Free Software movement). (via Slashdot)
2001/1/4
No marks for The Designers Republic on their web design, mostly because they don't actually use HTML and just make everything embedded Flash. Having to start VMWare to access their web site (you try finding a working Flash plug-in for Linux) is annoying.
(And the Macromedia Flash plug-in for Linux is unusable. It works, but it grabs the audio device, and freezes Netscape until it gets it. Having to stop listening to your MP3s because there's a Flash ad on a page is just not acceptable, even for the leprous beggars who don't use Windows.)
Anyway, if you want to snarf it from a UNIX machine, the Designers Republic's free screen saver may be found here (for the Mac) or here (for Windows). (Cute URLs, guys...)
2000/12/6
Browsing the Macromedia Flash website, I discovered this "feature" entitled "What You Print Is Not What You See." This basically means when you print a web page, that little Flash banner ad can print out multiple pages worth of advertising drivel (if the designer wants it to). This is akin to having a unseen, secret speaker on your car radio that mysteriously blabs ads when advertisers want. Hey, thanks for thinking of the users, Macromedia!