Why is website design so awful today, generally?

[winxmac]

Windows 8 from 2012 and mobile browsing for me are to be blamed...

We used to have 3.5", 4" touch screen displays and websites when viewed on smaller screen specially the font are tiny so they had to update their websites to use bigger elements...

Now that we have bigger smartphone displays close to 7" [19.5:9], the website elements keep getting bigger and even just the UI of android and iOS...

We got a preview of it with iOS 10 but bigger UI elements full launch was with iOS 11 and got worse and worse...

YouTube back then allows you to see about up to 5 or 6 videos on a row depending on the screen resolution but now on a 15" MacBook Pro 2015 [2880 x 1800 shown as 1440 x 800], only 3 videos each row is shown...

To me, MacRumors is one of the few websites that can be considered reminiscent of 90's to early 2000's website design...

Speaking of YouTube, right clicking the logo to open the site in a new tab now shows an oval surrounding it but is hidden afterwards... I just noticed it a few minutes ago...

 

[polyphenol]

Not just aesthetic considerations, legibility, element sizes, etc.

But I have found too many sites where I have ended up in a loop. Follow a link on the initial page, to another page, etc., and then ending back on the original page. Never reaching the thing you want to find. And no clear way out - other than closing the tab!

 

[Tozovac]

Not just aesthetic considerations, legibility, element sizes, etc.

But I have found too many sites where I have ended up in a loop. Follow a link on the initial page, to another page, etc., and then ending back on the original page. Never reaching the thing you want to find. And no clear way out - other than closing the tab!

Somewhat related, and even Apple can be really bad about this, is having multiple links on a tall page where each link looks a little different than the other but leads to the same next/other page. I have to go back-and-forth to and try each link sometimes, to confirm I’m not missing out on something different. It’s like having a door on opposite sides of a room but they both lead out the front door. I blame this on the pervasive use of pages that are just way, way too tall, often seemingly more for some shock and awe fancy animations and graphics, one of my initial critiques of awful website design. In the most general sense, when a page/app/OS doesn’t do what you intuitively expect and/or just gets in the way, it’s not good.

 

[TBoneMac]

Old thread but besides the point;

I think it’s because our computers are so powerful now that they can “afford” to have all these ads and ”wasted space/bad design” because the aspect ratios/resolutions are larger. Giving them more ”room” to make these kinds of decisions.

Also things are expensive (inflation) so you need more advertisement to compensate.


The sad thing is that it means that even though our computers/ipads/phones are much faster than before they end up feeling slower/the same pace as before because of all the extra things on every webpage.

It’s like we’re living with similar speeds to 2005 just with more “complex” websites (mostly advertisements)

Not just aesthetic considerations, legibility, element sizes, etc.

But I have found too many sites where I have ended up in a loop. Follow a link on the initial page, to another page, etc., and then ending back on the original page. Never reaching the thing you want to find. And no clear way out - other than closing the tab!

Sadly PolyPhenol, I think this is because they want more “clicks/visits” because more clicks/visits makes their websites look better to investors and ad-sellers. Which leads to higher profits. They don’t always care if it makes the user experience bad if they can get away with it.

 

[Nermal]

The people who use the "computers are faster now" excuse apparently don't realise that people want to do more than one thing at a time. Imagine if every piece of software tried to use 10 GB of memory and 3 GHz of CPU.

 

[avro707]

I happened on this site from VR in Finland, the rail operator: https://www.vr.fi/en

And it's counterpart in Sweden: https://www.sj.se/en

Both of them very clean and simple, especially the SJ one.

This one is also quite nice: https://www.ns.nl/en

I've been looking over a few of them in preparation for a web project.

 

[cyb3rdud3]

I happened on this site from VR in Finland, the rail operator: https://www.vr.fi/en

And it's counterpart in Sweden: https://www.sj.se/en

Both of them very clean and simple, especially the SJ one.

Whilst I like them, I do find that the maximum width is too narrow and leaves a lot of whitespace. They could do better with the responsive design, especially considering the amount of widescreen laptops. I'm also not keen on them placing the primary button on the left and secondary on the right. That doesn't feel logical for left to right languages. Just as placing key notices underneath the form. Furthermore I don't understand why the hamburger menu is always there even on an ultrawide monitor. That is an element for a responsive menu, not to just always hide it.

And animations on page transitions is very last century...

Basically feels like mobile sites with no consideration for desktop users.

 

[avro707]

I think it's to do with the area you tend to look at, if it's too wide it becomes more difficult to look at.

I see the SJ site is running on AEM (see the image paths with the DAM path and the image renditions), which is even more relevant since that's what I'm involved with.

 

[Nermal]

I think it's to do with the area you tend to look at, if it's too wide it becomes more difficult to look at.

My personal opinion is that "best width" is subjective, and that the visitor should resize the window to their preference. On the other hand, my workmates were astounded when they first saw my screen with windows everywhere. I have the gall to not maximise absolutely everything?!

 

[Nermal]

"Please enter your date of birth"

I enter "xx/xx/83".

"Date of birth is invalid".

Hmm, perhaps they want "1983". So I click between the / and the 8, and type "19". This results in "1839", because they've put some stupid script in there to move the insertion point to the end of the field on every keypress.


And just because one problem isn't enough: the site explicitly asked me to pick my language. I chose English, and the site appeared in English... but sent me the confirmation email in Maori.

 

[polyphenol]

"Please enter your date of birth"

I enter "xx/xx/83".

"Date of birth is invalid".

Hmm, perhaps they want "1983". So I click between the / and the 8, and type "19". This results in "1839", because they've put some stupid script in there to move the insertion point to the end of the field on every keypress.


And just because one problem isn't enough: the site explicitly asked me to pick my language. I chose English, and the site appeared in English... but sent me the confirmation email in Maori.

One site I use wants my account number - which is perfectly reasonable. But I can never remember if the hyphens are needed or allowed - or not.

X-100-200-3000 vs X1002003000

I know they put the hyphens in on communications such as statements. And I know that, when I am logged in, the account displays with hyphens. But I also know that I used to fail to login if I used hyphens when entering it at login. I went through the failed login process more than once before I remembered it rejected the hyphen version!

Right now, I can't remember which version(s) it accepts!

 

[cyb3rdud3]

One site I use wants my account number - which is perfectly reasonable. But I can never remember if the hyphens are needed or allowed - or not.

X-100-200-3000 vs X1002003000

I know they put the hyphens in on communications such as statements. And I know that, when I am logged in, the account displays with hyphens. But I also know that I used to fail to login if I used hyphens when entering it at login. I went through the failed login process more than once before I remembered it rejected the hyphen version!

Right now, I can't remember which version(s) it accepts!

Yeah, that is not great.

I know it isn't a fix for bad web design, but this is where a password manager like 1Password is really handy so you don't have to remember stuff you shouldn't have to remember.

 

[polyphenol]

Yeah, that is not great.

I know it isn't a fix for bad web design, but this is where a password manager like 1Password is really handy so you don't have to remember stuff you shouldn't have to remember.

Bitwarden here!

 

[Nermal]

One site I use wants my account number - which is perfectly reasonable. But I can never remember if the hyphens are needed or allowed - or not.

I can do one worse. One of the pizza places here has a phone number prompt, with an example "021 123 4567" next to it. However, the form itself will reject the number if you enter spaces.

 

[Tozovac]

Like I've said a few times in this thread, I wish I could have titled it "Why is website/apps/interface design so awful today, generally?"

Why do app developers still cling to the theme of thin, small, light blue and grey colored font on a white background, but with lots of unused white space between neighboring commands/options? I use Wyze cameras and devices (I don't care about shared videos/hacks for a camera pointed at my driveway, please nobody go down that tangent here) and their app is so inconvenient at times, especially on a smaller screen. There are so many opportunities for simple improvements via undoing all the faddish interface details. How about some bolder higher-contrast fonts, squeeze a few more cameras/commands on a given screen instead of spreading them out and giving so much extra empty space for each, etc.

To anyone who yells "but accessibility"....how is thin, low-contrast colored font on a stark white background good for accessibility for anyone. A few smart UI enhancements focusing on common sense instead of force-fitting to...some pervasive theme that won't go away...could result in a lot fewer scrolls and taps for common actions repeated numerous times a day. There are some apps from seemingly smaller outfits that have managed to work within Apple's toolkit to get an intuitive and efficient layout that looks like it was developed by someone who actually uses the app. So why not apps from the bigger companies with larger user bases to support and keep happy and away from the competition.

 

[polyphenol]

And why do so many websites prevent use of the browser back button?

Sure, you can click on the back button. But you don't get back where you came from, at least, not where you think you came from. Whether a search engine or a saved link or anywhere else. You just go back one page which then automatically re-forwards you to the same page you were on.

Drop-down the tab history and you can see that you jumped past the first page onto the second. Hence browser back takes you to the first page, not the search or whatever.

Microsoft's own websites are especially awful for this.

 

[avro707]

And why do so many websites prevent use of the browser back button?

Yes this is annoying and Microsoft sites are terrible for it, along with a lot of media sites that want to hijack your back button. Message to those sites, I won't visit again and I'll tell others to not visit also.

You watch, if Google was to adjust search rankings for sites known to do this it would stop immediately. All the bad sites doing that would ditch this about as fast as their developers could do the change.

People can whinge about the power of Google and that it is too much, but it can be a positive at times.

 

[paardenkapper]

I have worked in web development since the early 2000s starting with Adobe GoLive and PageMill. Websites have changed a lot since then but in the last 6-8 years at least the front-end side has stagnated somewhat.

Due to the need for websites to be responsive, hence having the same functionality on mobile, tablet, desktop - most websites follow the same column based style and only differ in fonts/sizes, colour and to some extend shapes. We used to build websites in Photoshop and slice them to extract images.

In a way every website was painted for each customer and conveyed every quirk of a customers corporate design.
Looking back many websites looked terrible, some were good but none would stand the test of time.

Judging as a ux designer it is kind of appreciated that websites get more and more similar to each other. You don't need to learn how to use a website. People tend to think more in terms of accessibility and keeping things tidy.

 

[cyb3rdud3]

Oh Gosh yes I remember those days. I hated being delivered a sliced Photoshop file. I was like what on earth do you want me to do with that. Totally not responsive, not suitable for accessibility standards. It were the days like if it is good enough for a paper brochure it’s good enough for the web.

So glad we don’t do that anymore and have way more collaborative tooling between product, design and developers.

 

[shadowboi]

Haha, its 2024 and websites are still awful (not you Macrumors, we love the design of this site!😃).

I think the reason was the shift to minimalist design that was driven by big playas like Microsoft and Apple.

I still remember when MS introduced Windows 8. It was awful and many people hated the design of it. Since then they not only managed to downgrade their UI design to even more deepest deeps with Windows 11 but they also made the whole OS a sluggish and constantly spying zombie monster. But people forgot and many are happy with Windows 11 and want 12 to be even worse.

Apple, well… they then introduced iOS 7. Jonny Ive said it was good. My poor eyes still cannot adjust to excessive white colors, lack of shades, thin fonts and lack of intuitive elements.

Also maybe it is because there is now a new generation of UI designers and lack of good managers who would like to push some kind of innovation. People care more about profit than about investing in something that looks actually good. Because investments in their minds are always expenses, i.e. lost profit. This is probably why iOS haven’t had any redesign since 2013🤣

There definitely needs to be some change. I am tired of this minimalistic-everything

 

[avro707]

We used to build websites in Photoshop and slice them to extract images.

I remember how they used to be sliced up. Eeek!

Nowadays the wireframes are the reference only and at least in my cases the actual graphics rarely used aside from logos. Everything else is mostly in the CSS. At lot of the impact comes from use of beautiful images.

It has changed so much now - modern CSS and HTML really is great. Flex box especially makes things really simple.

 

[Nermal]

Oh Gosh yes I remember those days. I hated being delivered a sliced Photoshop file. I was like what on earth do you want me to do with that. Totally not responsive, not suitable for accessibility standards. It were the days like if it is good enough for a paper brochure it’s good enough for the web.

So glad we don’t do that anymore and have way more collaborative tooling between product, design and developers.

On the other hand, those sites tended to load quickly on a broadband connection, and the text appeared immediately. No "loading" animations while it goes and runs some JavaScript to fetch the actual content, no "subscribe to our newsletter" when you move the mouse too far up the screen, no unrelated video in the sidebar...

 

[cyb3rdud3]

On the other hand, those sites tended to load quickly on a broadband connection, and the text appeared immediately. No "loading" animations while it goes and runs some JavaScript to fetch the actual content, no "subscribe to our newsletter" when you move the mouse too far up the screen, no unrelated video in the sidebar...

Actually, it should run way faster now, no excuse if a website doesn't. Text and vectors are way smaller, plenty of optimisation techniques available where images are required, CDNs are common, cheap and geolocated.

I still don't subscribe to letting the client process it all, business logic on the client is silly, even the react community is coming full circle and seeing the error of their ways And yes, I always argue agains the marketing people wanting those weird front end features, great way to scare users away. They don't want to listen though, not even when the analytics are provided...Some of us do try...

 

[paardenkapper]

Yes and no - when websites are configured well and scripts load asynchronous, assets are minified and so on they should load fast on any connection. On the other hand - 20 years ago there were almost no frameworks, you could not use custom fonts as you were limited to the "web core fonts" and the only real load came from pictures, css and maybe some javascript.

I also do not miss the time when you had to test your website in IE6, IE7, Firefox, Netscape and other browsers depending on the customers budget because every browser would interpret JS and CSS differently. You had to use hacks and workarounds at every corner. Today it's a breeze with to leading browser engines and CSS3 support and JS that is actually usable. In most cases jQuery is not even needed.

 

[polyphenol]

Text for text - please!

I have just interacted with a German website - which displays in German. It does have an option to switch to English, but Safari translation also works perfectly adequately. (And I know enough German to more or less get by, but translation is so much easier and faster!)

Despite this, there were so many things which remained German because they are images of text. Buttons being a prime example.

Though this is a widespread issue even without translation. Sites where the page headers and footers are images. So any text in them cannot readily be copied and used. Company name, addresses, phone numbers, special offer codes, company registration numbers, email addresses even for sales - things there is a clear reason for us as site users to need to paste elsewhere.

Obviously, some companies want to barely comply with requirements and might do this on purpose. But even companies which clearly point you at the information all too often use images.

I'm pretty impressed with Apple OCR. There are times it manages to read things that I have struggled with! So all these sites do is make things awkward and annoying.