Web 2.0 Distracts from Good Design

stevedcc writes "The BBC is running a story about web 2.0 and usability, including comments from Jakob Nielsen stating "Hype about Web 2.0 is making web firms neglect the basics of good design". From the article: "He warned that the rush to make webpages more dynamic often meant users were badly served. Sites peppered with personalization tools were in danger of resembling the 'glossy but useless' sites at the height of the dotcom boom."

Comments

Old fashioned

[andy666]

I stick to html, since everyone can read it (mostly). And I hand code it, since most of the editors seem to make a real mess of the code, and sometimes I want to change it. Anyone else this old fashioned ?

Re:Old fashioned

[Mouse42]

Really? Thats considered old fashion? I figured everyone these days hand coded their HTML with close integration with CSS, because thats the only way you can really ensure a minimal amount of code, cross browser compatibility, good SEO, and ease of updates.

Re:Old fashioned

[mangu]

Anyone else this old fashioned ?

I also stick to hand-editing html, however I also use a lot of automatically generated html. For instance, when formatting a computer language for syntax emphasis automatic coding not only saves work but makes less errors than hand coding. Also, when creating tables I often use small Perl scripts to insert the data into the html.

But I always cut and paste the result into an html file that I edit by hand. I've never found a WYSIWYG html editor that gives me full control over how my pages will look.

Re:Old fashioned

[cultrhetor]

Dreamweaver wouldn't be so popular if everyone took this sensible route. I once had to unscrew about 15 pages created by Dreamweaver and Fireworks. It took forever - each page, despite coming from the same "template" was messed up in its own unique way.

Re: Old fashioned

[Black Parrot]

I stick to html, since everyone can read it (mostly). Alas, it's already too late for that. I still find sites that won't render correctly on browsers other than the one the developer used.

Re:Old fashioned

[kosmosik]

> Really? Thats considered old fashion? I figured everyone these
> days hand coded their HTML with close integration with CSS,
> because thats the only way you can really ensure a minimal
> amount of code, cross browser compatibility, good SEO, and
> ease of updates.

Well I guess this *is* old fashioned. Right now you tend store the content in a database of some form. Some form like XML structure. Then you load this structure and transform it to HTML. The only thing that you handcode is the template for parser that returns HTML code.

Also it is more convinient to wrap everything into parser. Instead of doing something like this (imaginery language):

echo "

"
echo $content
echo "

"

You do something like:

html_render_p($content)

This way you don't get any mistakes (typos) in HTML code since the parser returns proper code and if the parser is broken you just fix the parser.

Re:Old fashioned

[Tuoqui]

Actually I hand-code just about everything in valid XHTML Strict. Integrated with CSS and hand written javascript and PHP. It is the only way to be certain that some editor isnt shoving in random useless garbage like a crapload of comments with 'CREATED WITH X-EDITOR! (C) 2007!'

Re:Old fashioned

[Richard Steiner]

Sure. Strict HTML 4.01 Transitional here, no CSS, and alternative access testing for Lynx users and those who can't use frames directly.

Re:Old fashioned

[JamesTRexx]

Nvu and Kate is what I use.
I really dislike sites that use flashy content but don't have an alternative access to a simplified version. Whenever I encounter one I won't even bother using it in the future.

Re:Old fashioned

[Xiaran]

I hear you on Dreamweaver brother(or sister). Ive often wondered when staring at the monstrosity of HTML that get ejected from the bowls of such products, "Is it not possible to develop some kind of page generating tool that actually generates code that is *vaguely* human readable?". I mean it should be. Ive often thought it would be useful to use such a tool to create a basic prototype in a quick and easy fashion and then take that base to tweak into the real site. Im thinking along the lines of tools such as Delphi and some C++ code generators that are very common for GUI stuff. They can automatically generate a barebones framework for you to code to town with.

Re:Old fashioned

[DittoBox]

Don't discount Dreamweaver. It's editor is absolutely top-knotch.

Now it's definitely not emacs, eclipse or VI(M) but it's awfully good and has nice auto-complete features. And if used properly it can help you stick to standards better. It also can do direct FTP editing, another big plus for me.

Re:Old fashioned

[garaged]

dreamweaver is kind enough to put hidden characters too, so you don't even see them on almos any editor, I have "corrected" more than a few files using "strings file > tt; mv tt file" just because DW altered it with binary bits, that is simply stupid.

Re:Old fashioned

[Mouse42]

Personally, I use Drupal to run my sites. Even though the content is stored in a database, and the site is run on PHP, I still have hand written my template files.

Sometimes, it's more efficient to go back to the basics :) I just created my first static site in three years the other day. It's a four page site, and the owner knows HTML rather well. It actually would have been more complicated for him to learn how to use Drupal to change the text on the site than it would be for him to edit the HTML pages directly.

And thats where a close integration with CSS comes in handy. The amount of HTML tags I needed were very minimal, and all of the "cool dodads" were created through merely CSS classes (like rounded corners). That way, the owner will likely make less mistakes while editing - quite the contrast from keeping track of a bunch of TR and TD tags!

Re:Old fashioned

[leothar]

Mod parent up! Dreamweaver has the best syntax highlighting I've ever seen for PHP, HTML, CSS, etc.

Re:Old fashioned

[CastrTroy]

The point is, is that they don't want to make it possible. By making the resulting html not human readable, they lock you into using their application to edit it. So once you have hundreds of pages developed in dreamweaver, it's very hard to move away from using dreamweaver.

Re: Old fashioned

[Mouse42]

In this day and age, any worthwhile professional web developer will go through cross browser compatibility. Small time developers, though, will likely have difficulty supporting browsers on an OS other than their own simply through a financial limitation. It took me a long time to be able to afford a Mac Mini.

Re:Old fashioned

[kosmosik]

Well you didn't got me. I meant that doing HTML line-by-line style is old-fashioned. Currently we tend to output HTML elements via XML transformations and so on. Meaning that you do not hand code but the application code generates document nodes/tags automatically. Like (but this is oversimplyfied imagined presentation language).

echo "<title>"
echo $title
echo "<title>"

vs.

html_render_title($node.title)

The first one is prone to typos (as you type tags by hand), the other one not because function generates proper code in HTML without hand typing.

Re:Old fashioned

[itlurksbeneath]

Well, at least it's not as bad as trying to unscrew pages made by FrontPage + Extensions. Those are a nightmare.

And as to the GGP's question, yes, here's one more that hand codes. jEdit rocks...

Re: Old fashioned

[yahooadam]

I don't particularly have a problem with sites that don't work 100%

but the thing that really cheeses me off, is the fact so many web Dev's don't put any way of contacting them on the site

So even if you wanted to tell them how their site didn't work, you cant because they didn't put any contact details on

Re:Old fashioned

[Anonymous Coward]

Open in visual studio, CTrl-A, Ctrl-K, Ctrl-F.

Or Tidy it.

Really it's very hard to move away from using dreamweaver because it's a fantastic product.

Re: Old fashioned

[Knara]

That's a pretty "small time" business indeed if you can't afford a $500 capital expense like a Mac Mini.

Re:Old fashioned

[slackmaster2000]

Agreed. Don't use Dreamweaver-specific features like templates, and never use the WYSIWYG editor. As an overall environment without all this extra crap, it's top-notch. A pretty decent editor with correct hints for HTML, CSS, and PHP, and proper project management that actually expects you to work on files locally, test on a testing server, and then publish to a production server. It's odd how many other packages can't get this right when it's such a painfully simple concept.

Re:Old fashioned

[pubwvj]

Hand edited HTML/CSS is my method too. Control, quality and compatibility.

Re: Old fashioned

[AaronLawrence]

At least those guys are honest. Then there is the 50% of web developers who put an email address and ignore everything that is sent to it.

Re:Old fashioned

[thinksInCode]

Dreamweaver has the best syntax highlighting I've ever seen for PHP, HTML, CSS, etc. Have you ever tried Aptana? It doesn't have all the features of Dreamweaver, but it has great syntax highlighting and code completion/documentation for HTML, JavaScript and CSS. I've used it a bit at work and am fairly happy with it..

Re:Old fashioned

[mackyrae]

I'm with you. I mean, I know everyone doesn't do that. They use Frontpage and Dreamweaver and whatever, but I'm with you in that it's how it *should* be. I'm supposed to do my cousin's company's website (though "make it blue" isn't much to go on, so until she gives me something like "I need these categories: __, ___, __" not much is happening), and I do it by ssh-ing into the server, starting up vim, and typing out a bunch of php files. The php isn't for programmy stuff (though dynamic navbar is something I'm working on), just saving me from retyping the footer, header, and navigation bar every time I decide to change something (or add a link). Frontpage/Dreamweaver unfortunately output independent files, so making one change still requires editing every page and re-uploading, even if it's considereed slightly less tedious to do it that way (really, copying and pasting the modified HTML sounds less tedious than navigating menus over and over, but that's just me). They're full of XHTML, and they use links to style sheets (because what's the point of using ? You have to change it on *every* page then, and that sucks). The files do the "proper" thing where the XHTML is all and

with text, and the CSS controls all of the style & position, so it's easier to read, and using CSS for the layouts means better flow and load-time than if you used tables or frames. Drop-down navigation menus load a lot faster in CSS than Javascript too.

For that matter, given the statistic that says that if a page takes more than 4 seconds to load, the visitor clicks "back" and goes elsewhere, why are so many still using editors that produce such bloated code? A site that would take 10 seconds to load done in Frontpage (okay, that'd be a big site) would probably clock in under the 4 second mark if you hand-coded it to be nice and lean. At the very least, could an editor that produces non-bloated code be made? It'd be nice to have one that you can put in "template" mode and it outputs a bunch of php & css files (with css layout, not tables!) then makes each page include those files with just little "content" divs. It'd probably be the first time I used a WYSIWYG since I was 10 or 11 and they said we had to learn to use Frontpage in school (though now I think about it, I used the "HTML" tab and not the WYSIWYG tab in that class...probably for the sake of getting faces like O_o from teachers/students because that's fun).

Re:Old fashioned

[element-o.p.]

Absolutely.

I've had the great pleasure of modifying and/or debugging the sweet, elegant code created by Front Page and Dreamweaver that my wife insists upon using on her web pages </sarcasm>. While I had been interested in using automated tools at one time, the first time I had to wade through all of the extra crap these two programs dump into even a simple page (XML included into a static web page? <FONT> tags surrounding a line of HTML that only contains an <IMG> tag? No formatting for readability? WTF?!?!?), I swore off WYSIWIG HTML editors forever. Now, I do all of my coding by hand in Vim.

In addition, I'm a big fan of HTML::Mason for creating interactive web pages, and I've yet to find a WYSIWIG editor that can generate Mason and Perl code :)

Re:Old fashioned

[vimh42]

I like to hand code. WYSIWYG editors tend to make a mess of code and for those that don't, they give everything names that sometimes make it difficult to figure out what is what.

And the code is more portable when done by hand. Works well in any text editor. Whereas code from one WYSIWYG may blow up another because they like to format their code differently. Not necessarily breaking functionality in the browser, but making the code less readable and more difficult to hand edit.

Re:Old fashioned

[vimh42]

I've recently been trying out Dreamweaver CS3 and I like much of what it has to offer so far. I won't however touch Fireworks. Though maybe the newest version has improved along with Dreamweaver. Though I'm skeptical as to if what the DW can do would save me much time.

Re:Old fashioned

[Fordiman]

*laughs hard at you*

Re: Old fashioned

[Hognoxious]

It's not just the hardware. You have to look at the TCO. What about all the black turtlenecks, the jackets that cost 500 bucks but look like they're made from old sacks (which they are), the 10 supraduprdoublechoccolattes per day, the vats of KY jelly...

Re:Old fashioned

[Walter Carver]

MC (Midnight Commander) also has FTP editing:

mc ftp://ftp.example.com

Re: Old fashioned

[Knara]

You sir, receive a well-deserved, "heh".

Re:Old fashioned

[pwizard2]

Bluefish is pretty good, too.

It's currently a *nix app, but they are working on a native win32 port.

There's a kludgy win32 version out now that runs on top of cygwin, but its a very old version, unfortunately.

Re:Old fashioned

[__aaclcg7560]

I'm still trying to figure out how Dreamweaver CS3 works too and waiting for the doorstopper books to explain the advance features. My website was hand coded to use a template and a lot of PHP code to pull the content from the MySQL database. I want to do a "clean room" design to ditch the crud that had built up over the last ten years. My impression so far is that I might be better off to stay with TextWrangler and hand code the whole thing over again.

Re:Old fashioned

[mibus]

The point is, is that they don't want to make it possible. By making the resulting html not human readable, they lock you into using their application to edit it. So once you have hundreds of pages developed in dreamweaver, it's very hard to move away from using dreamweaver.

Sorry, what? I do web-dev for a living, and our team currently has two designers using DW for HTML generation. While it's not a beautiful work of art, it's hardly locking you in to using DW only.

The thing locking people into DW is that it's just better than the established competition. We curse at it frequently enough (mostly for its iffy FTP uploads), but it's a mile ahead of anything else I've tried (for what we do with it, at least).

Re:Old fashioned

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Dreamweaver is an excellent tool for just creating core comp layouts. Dont use the templates or use it to manage a site. When it comes to more complex layouts (something that doesnt look like it was done in notepad) Dreamweaver is great. I just wish they had a tool that was just an editor like ultraedit but with some of the dreamweaver roundtrip functionality and the view code and preview mode the way it works in Dreamweaver. The problesm arises when someone soly uses an editor like Dreamweaver to layout a page in the wysiwig without knowing anything about the html and how to modify it.

Re:Old fashioned

[biojayc]

I agree here. I don't know how to use DW templates, and don't care to. I rarely use the WYSIWYG editor. Pretty much only code by hand, HTML, CSS, JS, and at work we use ASP (it sucks btw), but DW works great. Syntax highlighting and autocompletion save alot of time. I use to be about coding by hand, but when you have deadlines, and clients waiting, you need to get things done yesterday, and DW helps out alot IMO

Re:Old fashioned

[Anonymous Coward]

Claris HomePage and Adobe PageMill both produced nice readable code.

Re:Old fashioned

[khristian]

Me too. I use HTML+CSS (and javascript if I have to). It's the easiest way to keep the code readable, and maintainable. I can't believe how much useless code is generated by tools like Dreamweaver (the flamers' choice, it seems :P ). But this doesn't mean that Web 2.0 is only crap, it's just that people focus more on the shiny part of the page, instead of making a good base design for the application.

Re:Old fashioned

[agentultra]

vim + subversion + sdiff.. and a whole host of other nifty fsf/oss tools. more code, fewer gui distractions, better source control than plain ftp.

Then again, discount webhosts don't often give users access to their own subversion repos... rsync could probably help there.

Plus, why does anyone want to wait 20+ seconds to load their editor? I can get all the features and more in vim and it loads in a second or less. Plus no need to use my mouse.

Then again, I'm a mouse/gui hating keyboard junkie. ;)

(or emacs, nano, etc)

Re:Old fashioned

[dberstein]

Dude, your language is a bit confusing. What you mean is an XSLT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XSLT/) template applied to an XML (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML/) datasoure generates an (X)HTML ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML/) output. And may I ask, who creates the XSLT template?

This has nothing to do with a "parser". A parser parses a source, or said another way: without a source there is nothing to parse. You still need to code the source ;)

Wether to code the source by hand or with the help of an IDE depends on several things:

• Personal preferences
• The task at hand (would you create an image banner file by filling 1s and 0s in vi?)
• The tools availble (a really small shop may be unable to buy the new/best IDE)

Re:Old fashioned

[crh3675]

I have been hand coding for 14 years. Nothing wrong with it. And actually, what is a good HTML editor out there that actually generates valid XHTML markup and can accommodate for multiple browser platforms. Needless to say, it has always been the safest and most efficient means of programming for myself.

Re:Old fashioned

[Anonymous Coward]

HTML never went out of fashion, afaiac. Although I prefer to use Perl to write the dynamic bits of HTML for me, while the repetitive bitsa, and page-specific bits, go in page-fragment files.

Re:Old fashioned

[babylon93]

DreamWeaver is the worst. No syntax hilighting for Perl. At all.

Forces you to use tabs (instead of spaces). Attempting to choose otherwise will result in a mixture of tabs and spaces.

Even now, after nearly a decade of DreamWeaver, an FTP transfer requires 100% of my CPU. The progress meter is not a progress meter at all.

It doesn't even provide proper autocomplete for JavaScript (not even client-side). Considering how deeply tied to JavaScript the DreamWeaver UI is, this has always bothered me.

Sure, it's better than nothing. But after *this* long under development, I expect a lot more that what we have now.

Adobe/Macromedia - you should be ashamed!

All good things in moderation.

[AltGrendel]

Web 2.0 doubly so.

Seriously, just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Re:All good things in moderation.

[Anonymous Coward]

I see you practice what you preach.

Re:All good things in moderation.

[Rob Kaper]

Moderation, and making things optional. Keep content and interactivity alive with Javascript disabled and chances are that whatever you're doing with "Web 2.0" is not ruining your design.

And what most people don't even realise: it's actually the easiest way! Don't write a completely new interface in AJAX, instead just call existing pages with an additional xml=1 parameter. The target page still does whatever you want it to do on the server-side, with the only difference that it sends back the XML (or encoded innerHTML stuff or whatever) instead of an entire page.

Also,

[Threni]

it's got a stupid name.

Re:Also,

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay!!! Someone who agrees that it's a misnomer... It's no major version upgrade, that's for sure.

From wikipedia, "Some technology experts, notably Tim Berners-Lee, have questioned whether one can use the term in a meaningful way, since many of the technology components of "Web 2.0" have existed since the beginnings of the World Wide Web."

Some explain this to me?

[zappepcs]

stevedcc writes "The BBC is running a story about web 2.0 and usability, including comments from Jakob Nielsen stating "Hype about Web 2.0 is making web firms neglect the basics of good design". What does Web 2.0 have to do with people neglecting the basics of good design? As far as I can tell they have always done that.

From the article: "He warned that the rush to make webpages more dynamic often meant users were badly served. Sites peppered with personalization tools were in danger of resembling the 'glossy but useless' sites at the height of the dotcom boom." Hmmmm "glossy but useless" ? Is the author talking about all these 'news' sites that are dripping with advertisements interspersed with only a small to modest amount of content? The web sites of today are looking more and more like magazines of yesterday; >60% advertisements and 30% content, where the difference is filled with trying to find the table of contents or the 2nd and 3rd parts of the story buried deeply in the magazine with incorrect page number links to them.

Re:Some explain this to me?

[drgonzo59]

What does Web 2.0 have to do with people neglecting the basics of good design? As far as I can tell they have always done that.

This is some BBC guy, their version of good design probably = "Flash and shinny buttons with special effects and blinking links". I actually prefer the basic and simple looks of a basic MoinMoin wiki or a simple blog -- the less flash and crap the better, just the information.

Re:Some explain this to me?

[Ngarrang]

Amen, brother. There were visually-poor web sites long before "Web 2.0" was coined.

Re:Some explain this to me?

[Yer Mom]

The web sites of today are looking more and more like magazines of yesterday; >60% advertisements and 30% content

Except Adblock Plus didn't work on yesterday's magazines, of course.

Re:Some explain this to me?

[Bogtha]

This is some BBC guy, their version of good design probably = "Flash and shinny buttons with special effects and blinking links". I actually prefer the basic and simple looks of a basic MoinMoin wiki or a simple blog -- the less flash and crap the better, just the information.

This is Jakob Nielsen, the usability expert who regularly gets flamed for advocating more spartan designs and fewer distracting special effects. You're approximately 100% wrong about what he thinks "good design" is.

Re:Some explain this to me?

[Bogtha]

What does Web 2.0 have to do with people neglecting the basics of good design? As far as I can tell they have always done that.

It's a story that reoccurs every few years when a new technology comes along. Somebody comes up with a new technique/technology/approach, and gets a lot of attention because it's quite useful. Then the hype engine goes into overdrive, PHBs start putting it on job advertisements, and people get book deals. A multitude of copy & paste monkeys buy the books, get the jobs and apply that technique/technology/approach to everything they see, with no understanding of when it's actually useful. The industry gets flooded with a bunch of one-trick ponies.

This happened with frames, JavaScript, Java, Flash, DHTML, ActiveX, Ajax, and now it's "Web 2.0"'s turn. Eventually, the field will settle down and there won't be quite so many fanboys around — they'll either broaden their skills and get a clue, their business will fail, or they will get fired. And then things will be relatively stable until the next big thing comes along.

So I guess you're right, this is an ongoing problem, but it's still news when the cycle starts again.

Re:Some explain this to me?

[ObiWanKenblowme]

Despite the constant references to him and his ideas, I think Nielsen is highly overrated. I agree that unnecessary graphic elements can get in the way of your message, but his solution is usually to remove *all* graphic elements and stick with plain dark text on a light background. Good design is about conveying an idea or information cleanly and clearly, and often "making it look pretty" can go a long way toward that goal. More often than not, "usability" seems to just mean "get rid of the images."

Re:Some explain this to me?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is some BBC guy, their version of good design probably = "Flash and shinny buttons with special effects and blinking links".

Huh?

Re:Some explain this to me?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Is the author talking about all these 'news' sites that are dripping with advertisements interspersed with only a small to modest amount of content? The web sites of today are looking more and more like magazines of yesterday; >60% advertisements and 30% content, where the difference is filled with trying to find the table of contents or the 2nd and 3rd parts of the story buried deeply in the magazine with incorrect page number links to them.

That sounds a lot like the nerd computer sites that I no longer visit, too many menu bars (I usually count five on a typical site), lots of dancing ads and a freaking table of contents and index on *every* page. Paper magazines were almost never that bad, but that is status quo for most of the hardware sites I've seen. The only exception I am aware of is DailyTech, which is a lot more tasteful, though posting there was troublesome in the past because it often generated errors.

Re:Some explain this to me?

[zero_offset]

This is Jakob Nielsen, the self-proclaimed usability expert who gets flamed for having one of the most god-awful sites on the Web. Seriously, have a look at this dumping-ground-style piece of shit which we may presume ought to be a model for excellent usability:

http://www.useit.com/

Re:Some explain this to me?

[anomalous cohort]

Right, it's not so much that Web 2.0 itself is distracting web companies from the basics of good design as it is the rush to go Web 2.0 that is the source of the distraction. At least, that's what I got out of RTFA.

Re:Some explain this to me?

[Bogtha]

I agree that unnecessary graphic elements can get in the way of your message, but his solution is usually to remove *all* graphic elements and stick with plain dark text on a light background.

No it isn't. That's largely a myth propagated by bad designers who resent being told that they are over the top, the odd line here and there in an article taken out of context, and people like you, who seem to repeat the myth without having read his actual opinions. It's true that he used to make a bigger deal out of the graphics issue, but that was a decade ago, when download speeds were a fraction of what they are now and had a much bigger impact on the user.

Try reading his books and articles. He's actually quite reasonable when you listen to what he actually says instead of the ridiculous straw-man people have him confused with. He typically presents the issue as a trade-off between what designers want to do when they get carried away, and the consequences it has on the end-user. And he backs it up with actual data from actual studies.

Can you actually point to a single instance of him saying that all graphic elements should be removed and a monochrome colour scheme should be used? I've seen him say that overuse of graphics and use of graphics without a purpose are bad, which often get exaggerated to "Nielsen says don't use graphics", but he's rarely as inflexible and dogmatic as his critics would have you believe.

Re:Some explain this to me?

[ObiWanKenblowme]

Since you asked for only a single instance, then yes, look at useit.com, which consists of - wait for it - plain text. I'm not going to go digging through articles to prove a point, but I'll thank you to not accuse me of blindly repeating someone else's opinion. I've been reading his articles for years, despite the fact that I disagree with him. Often. I'll grant you one point - he's sometimes pragmatic enough to admit that you often can't completely remove graphics and aesthetics, but his message seems to me to be that if you tip the scales 100% toward usability, you'll strip out the design and stick with plain text. That overcompensation for the over-the-top designers is my biggest beef with him. I'll be the first to agree, there's a lot of bad design out there, but the solution isn't to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Usability and design go hand in hand - separating them is missing the point.

Re:Some explain this to me?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The sad thing about Nielsen is that he does have a good point, which used to be the central theme of his web site and which his articles used to support.

Today, according to his own guidelines, his web site is worse than it used to be: his recent content is increasingly self-promotion, while relatively few of his latest articles contain hard data about the results of real usability research. He does still publish useful articles — a recent one advocating writing numbers using figures more often on the web than is traditional in print springs to mind — but today, such articles are the minority.

His site has not been on my "visit weekly" list for a long time now, and the biggest irony is that this is because he was correct about what people do — and don't — want to read on a web site.

Re:Some explain this to me?

[Bogtha]

Since you asked for only a single instance, then yes, look at useit.com, which consists of - wait for it - plain text.

Yes, look at useit.com. Specifically, look at the explanation for why the site is so plain. One of them is a remnant of older days (it's a decade-old design) and one of them is because it's his personal website and he isn't an artist. He explicitly says that the website doesn't follow his recommendations! I don't see how his website design is advocating no graphics and a monochrome colour scheme.

You know what? I don't like his site either. I've said as much in the past. And as you can see, even he says that his site could be better. But he's clearly chosen to maintain his website as a personal project, not as a showcase. As such, expecting him to comply with advice he gives to multi-discipline web design teams when he isn't even a professional web designer or working on it full time is unreasonable.

I'm not going to go digging through articles to prove a point, but I'll thank you to not accuse me of blindly repeating someone else's opinion.

Well I'm sorry, but I didn't think it was likely that you had actually read any of his work and still held those beliefs about him. To be honest, I still don't, especially when you won't point to anywhere where he actually advocates what you suggest. I took ten minutes to "go digging through articles" and found loads of places where he advocates using graphics.

his message seems to me to be that if you tip the scales 100% toward usability, you'll strip out the design and stick with plain text.

Then you haven't been paying attention. Counter-examples:

• Advocating a logo on every page and photos on product pages (even zoomable or rotatable photos in some cases)
• Aesthetics is one of the three main criteria for optimising a page layout
• If your content is boring, rewrite text to make it more compelling and hire a professional photographer to shoot better photos.
• Sometimes decisions must be made that will lower the design's usability quality, either because of limited time and budget or because of trade-offs with other desirable qualities.
• Use graphics to show real content, not just to decorate your homepage
• Use Meaningful Graphics. Images are powerful communicators when they show items of interest to users
• Animation and sound effects were positive design elements for children
• One of the simplest ways to improve product pages is to show better photographs. For the hero shot at the top of the page, show the most representative photo in a small size. Below that, offer several additional photos that show different angles and close-up details.
• A wall of text is deadly for an interactive experience. Intimidating. Boring. Painful to read.
• Credibility can be increased by high-quality graphics
• We did confirm that teens like cool-looking graphics and that they pay more attention to a website's visual appearance than adult users do.
• From his book Designing Web Usability: "There are also cases where the old saying "An image is wor

Re:Some explain this to me?

[Hognoxious]

More often than not, "usability" seems to just mean "get rid of the images."

There are many more people who interpret it to mean everything has a rollover and all the text should be lime green.

Re:Some explain this to me?

[Hognoxious]

Since you asked for only a single instance, then yes, look at useit.com, which consists of - wait for it - plain text.

He asked for an instance of Nielsen advocating plain text only. You gave an example of him doing that. Those words in italics aren't synonyms.

I'll thank you to not accuse me of blindly repeating someone else's opinion. I've been reading his articles for years

But apparently not understanding them.

Usability and design go hand in hand - separating them is missing the point.

Not at all. You can have ugly but functional, you can have pretty but unworkable, and you can have any other combination.

Re:Some explain this to me?

[Hognoxious]

For the 100th time, usability != aesthetics.

Re:Some explain this to me?

[zero_offset]

Usability may not be equivalent to aesthetics, but there is a relationship. Slashdot is hardly the best looking site on the Web, but it's very usable without being dog-ass ugly.

Had you said "useit.com != aesthetics" then you'd be on to something...

Re:Some explain this to me?

[sjames]

What does Web 2.0 have to do with people neglecting the basics of good design? As far as I can tell they have always done that.

That's true, but glitzy web 2.0 stuff makes it easier than ever to produce a content free site and convince yourself it's great. So it's hardly new to web 2.0, it's just compounded. Sorta like less expensive and more "realistic" explosion effects in a movie can result in less plot than ever.

Re:Some explain this to me?

[sjames]

Starting with a default of dark text on a light background is a GOOD thing. That doesn't mean never use images or color. The idea is to let the content suggest color and images where it's actually useful.

In other words, start with a plain text description. If and only if it becomes apparent that a diagram would help, put it in. Do not start with a diagram and then throw some text in as if it's an afterthought.

Too many websites seem to start with some sort of "look" they spend 90% of their design time on, then throw some text together at the last minute almost as an afterthought. The result is pretty (useless).

I'm to s3cks1 f0r my3

[packetmon]

You mean I could no longer get a job with my pimped geocities/xoom/fortunecity skills?

Re:I'm to s3cks1 f0r my3

[Reziac]

Not til you figure out how to put a proper HEAD on your pages' shoulders, at least ;)

Yep.

[Black Parrot]

He warned that the rush to make webpages more dynamic often meant users were badly served. Sites peppered with personalization tools were in danger of resembling the 'glossy but useless' sites at the height of the dotcom boom. That was precisely my thought when I saw, side-by-side, the proposed look for a new W2 site vs. our current bland but functional site.

Actually, I thought our current one *looked* better too.

Management 'distracts good design'

[hendridm]

Of all of the best practices that I've learned as a designer analyst over time, I've come to realize that management (with a bug in their collective bonnets about some new-fangled technology), do a better job of screwing up design and usability than the technology itself.

Re:Management 'distracts good design'

[xENoLocO]

Mod +1 Perfect Response.

Truer words have never been spoken... (err typed)

Re:Management 'distracts good design'

[PapayaSF]

I've come to realize that management (with a bug in their collective bonnets about some new-fangled technology), do a better job of screwing up design and usability than the technology itself.

Oh, so true. But in my experience, it's not usually new-fangled technology that's the problem. It's old-fashioned stuff: All 20 managers want their pet project/event prominently featured on the home page. Or every page must be cluttered with numerous "call to action" ads for free trials, newsletters, conferences, etc. Or my personal favorite: one particular main menu item must open in a new window! I nearly got fired trying to resist that one....

drop shadows and mouse hovers

[Speare]

Adding simple fortune-cookie CGI scripts, html tables with round corners, and javascript mouse-hover-active colors doesn't really make a site more useful. Sure, they can add to the mood if everything else is already well thought-out, but they can't save a bad site. That's Web 1.0 gloss.

With the newer sites, there's just as much crap that adds practically nothing. Expandable submenus in sidebars with cute > marks, dynamic community tagging options, dynamic community inbox viewing and sorting, and the ever-present use of rich gradient shading in every header tag. That's Web 2.0 gloss.

Hrm... I seem to have described an awful lot of Slashdot features. Curious.

Re:drop shadows and mouse hovers

[OzPeter]

You mean rounded corners etc like slashdot did with their style makeover??

Re:drop shadows and mouse hovers

[virgil_disgr4ce]

dynamic community tagging options, dynamic community inbox viewing and sorting How are these "gloss?" Do these kinds of features not add to a site, increasing usability? You don't have to use them if you don't want to -- but don't generalize it out as though no one in their right mind could possibly find them useful or helpful. That's just Web Luddism, something that's downright rampant around here.

Re:drop shadows and mouse hovers

[Speare]

Honestly, when was the last time you searched for articles based on their community tags? Oh, wait, can you even search for articles with their community tags on Slashdot yet? While it's theoretically possible to find it useful to search for "puppy basketball" on a photo site, how often would you be searching for terms that the photographer herself didn't think of adding when she uploaded the shot?

Re:drop shadows and mouse hovers

[AutopsyReport]

You are correct that the techniques you described do not make software/webpages more useful, but they do make it more usable. That's the key difference here. The usability, likeliness, and efficiency of operation of software or a website can increase with a better design.

Users having trouble extracting information from a page, or not having elements clearly outlined really inhibits an interface. I'm not saying that applying rounded corners to every design will help its usability, but I can guarantee that rounded corners, drop shadows, and hovers can serve very fulfilling purposes. It's no coincidence that rounded corners and drop shadows are used extensively in advertising.

Gah...new to actually using /.

[xipietotec]

How can I be the first to tag this as "Duh"?

Hype and more hype

[virgil_disgr4ce]

I'll grant at any time that usability is the number one priority. But this kind of "backlash" *against* Web 2.0 technologies is misguided, and a kind of hype in itself. Technologies are tools--they can be used to good or bad effect, and you can't generalize about the tool by the sites that happen to use it.

How can Nielsen miss the HUGE advancements in usability that these technologies have granted us? Sites that are designed as applications -- say, gMail -- no longer (as of years ago) have to be restrained by a protocol that was NEVER intended to be used like an application! I swear, I'll never understand why people get all up in arms about technologies that make the web EASIER to use!

This appears to me to be the same kind of argument as "Style vs. Substance! Style is bad, mkay?" Yet in this case it's not even about style, but about tools that enable a far bigger range of usability than previously. What gives?

Re:Hype and more hype

[Turn-X Alphonse]

These people don't have a single clue about a good website design, they just think "oh that is so awesome I must have it!", so they start swinging wildly at shadows and end up destroying the entire point of the process.

Look at Myspace, these people go "OMG MUSIC ON MY WEBSITE! SO COOL!" but have no damn clue how annoying it is, or how it eats bandwidth and makes their profiles pretty much unusable for Dial up users. But they don't know about this because "ZOMG SO COOL!!!"

See why there is a backlash now? Give an idiot a hammer and tell him to knock down a wall and he'll take down the house. Give an expert a hammer and he'll knock the wall down without causing any damage to the building at all.

Re:Hype and more hype

[virgil_disgr4ce]

Sure--fair enough, and you're absolutely right. Good tools in the hands of the incapable are a liability at best. I'm just frustrated by the backlash against the tools, and the mis-generalization of a whole group of technologies that gets cast in a bad light by insufferable Luddites.

Re:Hype and more hype

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Tools will be judged by their most common use. This is a sad truth but a truth none the less.

I live in the country side, I see 4x4s all day every day. Because here people use them for farm work, it makes sense and does the job. But if you look on TV 4x4s are now linked to middle aged women in the middle of a big city. Which is completely the wrong job for them. Web 2.0 3.0 or 4.6 are all going to be the same.

We remember the bad stuff and ignore the good. Because we're more inclined to remember negative than good. :)

Re:Hype and more hype

[suggsjc]

Give an idiot a hammer and tell him to knock down a wall and he'll take down the house. Give an expert a hammer and he'll knock the wall down without causing any damage to the building at all.

So you're saying we should get rid of hammers because idiots can tear down a house with them???

Not saying your are, but there seems to be a lot of this type of thinking here lately and quite frankly it is annoying. Stupid people will do stupid things, and there is not much you can do about it. There is, however, a flip side to that. We probably shouldn't allow just anyone to have a nuclear weapon in their closet, but a gun is a different story. Just because someone can kill someone else with a gun doesn't mean must get rid of them all.

Not the best analogy, but still. Just because people can misuse tools doesn't mean that the tools are to blame.

Re:Hype and more hype

[Turn-X Alphonse]

I never implied we should get rid of them all, but we need to balance it. Teach web 2.0 AFTER you've taught good design and function. a good basic site in plain old HTML is as good as any web 2.0 site.

It's a case of teaching the idiots before giving them the guns.

Re:Hype and more hype

[Anonymous Coward]

>How can Nielsen miss the HUGE advancements in usability that these technologies have granted us? Sites that are designed
>as applications -- say, gMail -- no longer (as of years ago) have to be restrained by a protocol that was NEVER intended to be
>used like an application! I swear, I'll never understand why people get all up in arms about technologies that make the web
>EASIER to use!

Look at Nielsen's history. This is Nielsen's shtick and I'm surprised you all take it seriously. Back when frames were a big innovation he wrote essays denouncing frame-based sites. Then when people starting posting PDFs he wrote essays denouncing the use of PDFs. Now user-generated content and AJAX are his new villains. All of these technologies have made the Web more usable. Yes, some people do bad things with good technology, but Nielsen's critiques are more about self-promotion than about making the Web more usable. Lots of wrong-headed advice.

Re:Hype and more hype

[Octopus]

I used to hang on every word on usability Jakob uttered, but I'm having a little disconnect here.

First, I think everyone has a different idea of what "Web 2.0" actually is, as evidenced by previous /. discussions on the topic. Is it RSS? Is it Google Ads? Is it AJAX? Is it all the new Javascript frameworks and slicker client-side interfaces? Sometimes I think the baseline of Web 2.0 is just using XHTML/CSS and finally getting away from trans HTML.

Secondly, every time a new technology framework makes SOMETHING easier, SOMEONE will be there, waiting, to abuse it. Jakob knows this, and I think that's what he's calling interface designers out on. Honestly, when I go to a site with tons of intricate interfaces for tagging, RSS, Trackback, etc., it does make my eyes glaze over - so I'm with Jakob there. But he also tends to be a stick-in-the-mud and denounces just about every new tech wave that floats across the web. He's like the crazy evangelical Christian that always preaches chastity and purity, even though he knows everyone's going to go ahead and sin anyway, just so his voice is heard. He always provides good anchor reference points when discussing usability - but he's still an anchor, and anchors are a drag.

Re:Hype and more hype

[Moridineas]

I don't get it. Myspace has a lot of users. A lot of obsessed users. People that presumably enjoy looking at myspace pages.

If a lot of people like something, what's the problem? Nobody says YOU have to look at myspace pages, or that YOU have to make your myspace page with an insane background+blaring music... but if other people like it, what's the problem?

"How annoying it is" -- well that's your opinion -- probably not shared by the creators!. How it eats bandwidth? Ok, so if you don't do anything that "eats bandwidth" -- no downloading of movies, mp3s, etc? No skype? No video gaming? Because that eats it too--the only difference I can tell is that you approve of your usage, and not of theirs. Dialup users? Effectively, who cares? If they think its cool and their friends / whoever don't care, again, what is the problem?

Jacon Nielsen

[Yoda Jedi Master]

Hmm, hmm... So teaching us design, Jacob Nielsen wants. How embarassing, how embarassing.

Re:Jacon Nielsen

[cultrhetor]

Better yet - when I wanted to register for his series of conferences initially, the links were broken or the form was fouled up.

Re:Jacon Nielsen

[virgil_disgr4ce]

SERIOUSLY!!! I'm laughing out loud at this. I want to appreciate Nielsen's attitude towards usability, but this is a patently clear example that elements of good design, which some view as "style" or "gloss," are *fundamentally* important (say, graphical hierarchy, graphical differentiation so you can tell at a glance what different sections are, etc etc). This site is a JOKE. Come on, Nielsen.

Re:Jacon Nielsen

[jddj]

Uh, first, it's "Jakob", not "Jacon".

Second, Nielsen's site practices what he preaches: it's not overloaded with "pretty" crap, and is in fact quite usable, loads nearly instantly, is probably near-invulnerable to a slashdot-induced meltdown, can be worked from a cell phone, and most importantly, it organizes the content well and gets the user to the important content quickly.

That there are other, prettier ways of doing things does not detract from doing the important things well first.

The guy posting in yoda-speak doesn't seem to understand that "design" in the usability sense is not the same thing as "graphic design".

Re:Jacon Nielsen

[Yoda Jedi Master]

it organizes the content well and gets the user to the important content quickly.

Disagree with you, I must. Simple? Yes. Fast? Yes. Organized? No.

Re:Jacon Nielsen

[Anonymous Coward]

> it's not overloaded with "pretty" crap

You can say that again. It is, however, overloaded with incoherent textual elements. Nielsen needs to take a break from pontification to learn something about typography. You know, usability stuff that people have been studying for hundreds of years?

Re:Jacon Nielsen

[virgil_disgr4ce]

it organizes the content well Are you kidding?

I'm serious--are you joking? There is almost NO hierarchy. All the data, and there's a lot of it, is basically on one or two visual layers. It's impossible to get an instant snapshot of the available content sections because the section headers scroll off ("below the fold"), and there's no top level navigation. Section headings are the same size as the body type, so I can't easily discern where sections begin and end (he could have just used separate divs for each section, so there'd be a gutter between colored backgrounds).

You and Nielsen seem to promote this idea that having no sense for design (information OR graphic) somehow actually *increases* usability. I'm all for usability first, fast downloads, etc., but we have to stop and admit that design IS important.

Re:Jacon Nielsen

[Anonymous Coward]

This website is not structured (organized). There is no menu (ie shortcuts). The difference between the static content and the dynamic one isn't clear enough (a simple bgcolor doesn't make the trick, you have also to use difference font-size to make it obvious). For such a content people are used to the portal style (ie menu on the right, content in the middle, dynamic stuff on the right)

So here is a very simple test...Let's imagine you know nothing about him and his business:
- Look at the page for 10 sec. Stop.
Have you understood his business? ie:
- What does it do?
- What does he promote?
- What is his experience (Bio, History, About me)?
- How to contact him (the contact page)?

No.

Re:Jacon Nielsen

[ObiWanKenblowme]

Clearly you don't understand that there's more to graphic and information design than "making things pretty." Good design is about communication first and foremost, and I'd argue that Nielsen's site is a good example of taking his principles to the extremes - he abandons graphical elements in an attempt to increase "usability," but in doing so he's left with a big, nearly undifferentiated page of text.

Re:Jacon Nielsen

[Rasgueado]

Wow. I completely agree. I do admit that his site is useability is more important then design, but this is just horrible. You need to focus at least a little bit on design. Looks like he needs to update some of his content too. http://www.useit.com/about/nographics.html "and since most users have access speeds on the order of 28.8 kbps" Really???

Re:Jacon Nielsen

[Rasgueado]

Damn, why didn't I preview that. Sorry.
That should read: I do admit that useability is more important then design, but this is just horrible.

Re:Jacon Nielsen

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no. It doesn't even validate.

Re:Jacon Nielsen

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm laughing out loud after visiting www.liminastudio.com . I mean I'm supposed to guess that your logo conceals the site's navigation. I'd defer to Nielson's experience if this is what you call good design.

Re:Jacon Nielsen

[markbt73]

A wall of hyperlinks on two different eye-searing colors of background does not really count as "organizing the content well."

A complete lack of visual appeal is one thing if you're looking for a free sofa, but to claim that any concession to aesthetics is unneccesary and should be avoided is just plain silly.

Re:Jacon Nielsen

[_bug_]

There is almost NO hierarchy.

Are YOU kidding? Actually there's better hierarchy there than most sites. Look at the use of heading tags. You've got an obvious structure from a top h1 down to individual sections head by h4 tags.

It's impossible to get an instant snapshot of the available content sections because the section headers scroll off ("below the fold")

"Below the fold"? Seriously? What is this, 1990s when the web was considered no different than print media? Scrolling, especially with the spread of mouses that have scroll buttons, is a trivial task. Furthermore the very concept of "above the fold" doesn't work for web pages. Users can have literally ANY resolution on their screen. From PDAs that are going to only show a few sentences to large 21" monitors that will show the whole damn page on half the height of its screen.

and there's no top level navigation

Top level navigation isn't needed on sites with very simple site architecture. Go back and look at the site. What links are you going to put into this top level navigation?

Section headings are the same size as the body type, so I can't easily discern where sections begin and end

use of color to provide a means of describing hierarchy is bad design. You're ignoring people who are blind or color blind as they won't receive that information. Using plain heading tags (as he does) allows the client to decide how the information of page hierarchy is conveyed to the user. In your case it's simply large and bold text. To a blind person their screen reader might increase volume or accent the titles and to a color blind person the large and bold text will stand out even for them.

You and Nielsen seem to promote this idea that having no sense for design (information OR graphic) somehow actually *increases* usability.

It's not a lack of design sense, it's a sense that not every client of your web page is can see, hear, and has a large resolution screen. If you really wanted to critique Nielsen's site you should go after him for the use of poorly contrasting background colors for his columns or the fact that he uses two columns instead of one. From that extrapolate that there is clearly room for a developer to create pages that work for any client, but have enhancements for the larger user base (visually and audibly unencumbered humans with computers at a minimum of 1024x768 resolution). Then go one to ask why hasn't Nielsen done more for that user base.

He says this as if it's something new.

[AKAImBatman]

Hype about Web 2.0 is making web firms neglect the basics of good design, web usability guru Jakob Nielsen has said.

I hate to steal his thunder, but when have web firms ever payed attention to good design? I'm sure that such companies do exist, but every contract I've seen for a website design has resulted in something that would look absolutely gorgeous in print, but lacks usability when transfered to the more interactive medium of the web.

If you ask these firms to follow a particular procedure for development, they usually mess it up. Visually it may look right, but usability-wise it's just plain wrong. "Web 2.0 features" are just one more thing for design firms not to understand.

Now, if I can back up for a moment, I'd like to say that this situation is perfectly understandable. Website design firms are mainly staffed by artists rather than technologists. They may have skills enough to use off-the-shelf libraries to add whatever feature you're looking for, but they're not going to know how to properly implement a technology solution. That's why the world has Computer Science/Engineering majors.

The best solution is to develop a strong relationship with a specific design firm, then get them to ship only the mockups and assets used. Have the implementation of the mockups done by in-house programmers or trusted consultants. (I can't stress the "trusted" part enough here.) If the implementors find something that doesn't make sense visually, then they can send it back until the web design firm gets a feel for what is needed.

Together, these two teams will produce a far better website than either could have done independently. It may cost a bit more in the short term, but the result will cost you a lot less in maintenance in the long-term. Furthermore, the teamwork you develop between these teams will give your company a powerful source for website changes and improvements.

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[account_deleted]

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What I find...

[Otter]

What I found, first when most of the literate people here split for Multiply, again when I was offered a moderator spot on another 2.0'ish site, and with other sites since, is that there's now an asumption that users are already familiar with all the generic functionality of delic.io.ous, Flickr, Digg and the rest. No one ever explains how to use "tags" or stuff like that -- it's as taken for granted as clicking on hyperlinks.

The makers seem either unaware of or uninterested in users who aren't already knee-deep in their competitors.

Pssh.

[MeanderingMind]

Sure, blame Web 2.0 for your horribly designed web pages.

The man in the article himself states clearly Web 2.0 is simply the "latest fad". It's simply the most recent in a long stream of red herrings chased by ignorant companies in an attempt to be web savvy.

The root of the problem is that the people who understand web design and make webpages are beholden unto managers, bosses, and other autorities who haven't the faintest idea what a good webpage does or looks like. The web designers bring prototypes, designs and nifty things to these people and get asked stupid questions such as "Is it Web 2.0". They want everything the internet has to offer in their webpage, whether or not it makes any sense for it to be there.

Web 2.0 is another potentially awesome facet of the internet being turned into a collective migraine for web designers.

Re:Pssh.

[onion2k]

If the majority of "Web 2.0" sites, or even just some "Web 2.0" sites, were corporation brochure pages, or media portals, or ecommerce sites, the types of sites that have a distinct separation between web team and management, then I'd agree with you. But they're not. The majority of prominent "Web 2.0" sites are personal projects that have gone big. The people in charge are the people who started coding and designing the website. The rest of the "Web 2.0" sites around are experimental sites from the people who wrote them. There aren't many that have a manager sitting behind the designers and developers cracking a whip to make them destroy usability by implementing whatever was featured in this month's Wired; the designers are doing that all by themselves by adding whatever hit the top of Digg this morning.

Re:Pssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Web 2.0 is another potentially awesome facet of the internet being turned into a collective migraine for web designers.

and users.

Re:Pssh.

[Bastard of Subhumani]

The web designers bring prototypes, designs and nifty things to these people and get asked stupid questions such as "Is it Web 2.0".

Tell them it's web 3.0, then charge them double. At least. Never really thought about the similarities between web design and the antiques business till now...

Yahoo TV

[SCHecklerX]

A shining example of how to totally screwup what was once a useful best-in-class site: http://yodel.yahoo.com/2006/11/28/anything-good-on -tonight/

And now my bank is going down the same road with their online bill payment tool. *sigh*.

Title

[Anonymous Coward]

Title: "Web 2.0 Distracts Good Design"

What does Web 2.0 distract good design from? Seriously, shouldn't that be Web 2.0 distracts designers from good design or something similar? As written, it seems to imply that good design is being distracted from something by Web 2.0, which is a little... odd.

MSN Finance boards

[sherriw]

The MSN finance message boards are horrid too. Massive frames so the viewable area of the actual board messages is tiny. And strange loading delays that freeze Firefox. I use adblock to kill the frames.

Re:MSN Finance boards

[ratsnapple tea]

Er, at the risk of sounding flamebaity, that's really nothing new—since when was Microsoft ever able to design anything usable?

Since when?

[twistedcubic]

As if, web pages of "good design" were actually common before "Web 2.0".

Web 2.0 == Flash?

[Colonel Angus]

Sounds like Web 2.0 is just like Flash.

Everyone gets such a hardon trying to come up with new crazy new ways of doing things that have been done the same way since the dawn of the interwebs. They forget that they've been done that way for a reason... they work. People know what to expect. And they find themselves at ease and in a comfortable state when surfing within those parameters.

That's not to say there should be no innovation, but that innovation should make things easier to understand and use, not scare your customers away.

Re:Web 2.0 == Flash?

[MikeBabcock]

Web 2.0 is a lot like Flash. There are good uses for it and it can even enhance the user experience and design. It can also be overused and abused very easily.

Take Google Maps as an example of good and bad use. It works very well, helps the user make use of the site and has a nice simple and easy-to-use design. However, users can't easily bookmark pages and expect them to work (Yahoo! maps corrects this problem by constantly updating the URI instead of just a 'link to this page' HREF).

Dynamic pages with dynamic data are all well and good, but my back button should still work, my bookmarks should do what I expect, and the content should be indexable by Google without hacks. It should also still look good and be easily navigable. We went through this with Flash (and still are) and with imagemaps and frames before that.

Article is definitely wrong...

[GBC]

After all, web 2.0 helps me to design rich-client synergies, disintermediate semantic networking and, of course, let's not forget it can assist in syndicating standards-compliant widgets*. Try doing all that on your web 1.0, gramps!

Oh and whilst I know that mangling the English language has become an artform here on Slashdot, surely "Web 2.0 distracts good design" is bad even by our (admittedly low) standards.

* Courtesy of The Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator.

What is Web2.0?

[jb_nizet]

I've seen two definitions of Web2.0: user-contributed contents, and the use of AJAX/DHTML.

The first characteristic doesn't need any new technology: Slashdot is a good example of a web site containing lots of user-contributed contents, and works for ages. No need for a 2.0 version of the web.

The second one is newer: we already had DHTML, but didn't have XMLHttpRequest. This is where abuse can lead to bad design and bad usability, IMO.
My advices to web developers: just because the content of your web site is dynamic and the site contains some forms doesn't mean you have a web application like GMail! Most of the time, it's just a web site, and should work like a traditional web site: the back button should work, opening pages in new windows or new tabs should work.
Just because you may refresh the body of the page without reloading it entirely doesn't mean you should. Think about why frames are usually avoided when you plan using AJAX: it might cause the same annoyances.

Re:What is Web2.0?

[laffer1]

Web 2.0 is a marketing approach to sell new books by publishing companies and to single out some sites as "better" because they are new and improved. We've just relauched IE4. DHTML and IE channels are back again with new names and slightly new/different feature sets.

Re:What is Web2.0?

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet on the other hand we have entire web pages reload when only one simple area needs to change (ESPN being my greatest peeve). Would it kill to have a bit more DHTML in the world?

Avg experience declining

[sherriw]

I use a bunch of Firefox plugins to improve my browsing experience... but I recently was stuck using a computer with only IE. I had totally forgotten how many sites were obnoxious. I don't mind some reasonable advertising, but sites seem to be increasing the percent of the screen given to annoying animated/Flash ads, huge colourful ads in the middle of the article, etc.

The worst are the sites that underline every noun and if your mouse accidentally passes over one of those words, a big ad box pops up that you have to close. How did it ever occur to someone to make a site where you aren't even free to move your mouse around if you want to without your reading being interrupted?

It also seems like the big, rich companies are the worst offenders. Like they can afford to piss off visitors, and we'll just take it... 'cause you know MSN is such a great site. Yuk. Usability has been going downhill since forever.... blaming web 2.0 is barking up the wrong tree. Maybe try blaming the boom of web advertising.

Re:Avg experience declining

[garyboodhoo]

sherriw: your simple point is well made, and is one that has eluded Nielsen for going on 10 years now.

Re:Someone explain this to me?

[maccallr]

Indeed... the general crapness of websites and emergence of web 2.0 seem to be anti-correlated in recent years...

Hmm...

[EinZweiDrei]

Although people in their late 30s make very different use of the web to those in their teens, Mr Nielsen expects that when those teenagers grow up the time they spend online will diminish.

Yeah...
Just like our parents' generation grew up to watch less television.

Nielsen a sellout

[zakkie]

Nielsen is a sellout and has no credibility. Shortly after releasing his "Flash is 99% bad" work, Nielsen took money from Macromedia, and suddenly it's not so bad:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20001029.html

Usability includes being able to access the content without using proprietary software, Jakob!

Re:Nielsen a sellout

[drew]

Am I the only person who finds it ironic that somebody who spends so much time talking about usability and readability still hasn't figured out the point of something as basic as margins? Good grief, his site just hurts to read no matter how wide I make my browser.

Re:Nielsen a sellout

[mshurpik]

The lack of trailing br's at the bottom of the page is awfully noobish. By fitting the page exactly in the screen, he's showing the same anal tendencies (graphic designer obsessive layouts) he was supposed to be rebelling against.

One good thing I can say, his homepage appears to be for dual monitors. Next, if he learns the IMG tag, he can tap the power of NCSA Mosaic.

Why is the BBC posting this now

[liquidsquid]

What I don't understand is why the BBC is posting this now. Did Neilsen just speak somewhere?

It's the same story he's been telling all along - so what makes it news? Why now?

Re:Why is the BBC posting this now

[swimsy]

Because his group just did a conference in London May 6-11.

Extrapolating from too few examples

[Andy_R]

MySpace is a horribly badly designed mess, but that doesn't mean all web 2.0 sites will be. Take a look at Trig.com (you could even listen to my geeky music there if you feel like it).

Their business model is basically 'Myspace but not a horribly designed mess'. I'm sure there's also someone out there building 'Youtube with buffering and no comment spam', 'slashdot with editors' and so on.

MySpace is the AOL of Web 2.0 - It got big early on, but it's not going to be long before people realise it's been left behind.

Web 2.1 anyone?

Technology Not Equal To Good Design

[Nitroadict]

This confirms something I've always thought true, especially when I first saw CSS come out (although mostly with CSS 2.0, the much more troublesome incarnation). New technologies, whether it be AJAX (which is becoming known for being insecure), CSS, or even HTML when it first came out, do not equal instant good design. Even now, users of HTML, arguably one of the oldest markup languages on the internet (or the oldest most used markup), still utilize what have become poor features, notably the marquee tag (interestingly implemented by Internet Explorer), and some consider tables a remanent (although arguably still useful tag) since CSS came along. Web design has always been, IMO, about compromises: compromise for what you want to do for what you can do, for what you want and what works, for what's ambitious to what's practical. Just because you have that bomb, doesn't mean you have to blow something up. This why only recently have i considered learning more beyond HTML and CSS (the later which I'm still learning to get a fluent grasp on without consulting tutorials every 5 mins). Again, IMO, I would point out that PHP is probably the only technology of Web 2.0 that has proved more useful than troublesome, which is why I plan on learning it whenever I stop stalling and actually take an intro to programming course I regretfully choose not to take in high school in favor of "learning" Word for an entire semester >_>. It's not all hopeless though; part of the fallout of this whole Web 2.0 business is that the new technologies will eventually be learned enough to utilize more specifically instead of riding a popularity wave. It's all really silly when most changes happen gradually; it's just the same game as whatever Web 1.0 was with different cards and different players.

Re:Technology Not Equal To Good Design

[IAmGarethAdams]

Please, if you take an introduction to programming course, don't go for one that teaches PHP. It might be easy to learn and quick at getting results for small projects, but PHP is to programming as table layouts are to web design - ugly and very bad at teaching you good style.

Re:Technology Not Equal To Good Design

[Reziac]

CSS is a lot of why [bitch of the day] realtor.com has lately gone from something that had some issues but could be beaten into working, to a site that I have entirely abandoned, preferring to fight with the local IDX (lousy search mechanism, but at least everything works).

realtor.com's notion of CSS means that crap moves around the page without regard for consistent or expected locations; that control buttons/links/tabs are sometimes entirely absent; that to make a next-page link work, I have to aim EXACTLY at the ***tiny*** number in the middle of the box, rather than clicking anywhere in the box THAT LOOKS LIKE A BUTTON; etc, etc, etc. Not to mention it's now slow even on broadband, and that the number of relevant results produced has dropped dramatically.

Oh, and now the damned thing looks like a Fischer-Price toy... as if whoever designed it had just discovered WinXP's default colours and interface.

This morning I had an argument on the phone with someone from realtor.com management, but she didn't have the vaguest idea what I was talking about, and tho she promised to "escalate" my complaint, I feel quite certain that nothing will come of it.

A perfect example of how JUST BECAUSE YOU *CAN* "UPDATE" A SITE'S INTERFACE DOESN'T MEAN YOU *SHOULD*.

Adaptive Radiation

[banditski]

Sounds like classic biological adaptive radiation.

Basically, a new way of doing this comes into being, and suddenly there is an 'explosion' of examples of that pattern in use for all kinds of different and often unrelated goals.

The example I learned about in university was the explosion of hominids after bipedalism was evolved. Suddenly, the African savannah was inundated with all these new weird and wonderful bipedal apes walking around taking benefits of the advantages afforded by bipedalism. Eventually, all but one of them (Homo sapiens) die out through direct or indirect competition.

Coming back to web 2.0 - a new way of doing things comes to light (i.e. AJAX), and people use it for myriad different applications. Those applications that actually deliver the goods stay and evolve and those that don't deliver are weeded out by market forces (natural selection).

Gods, I miss being a student and learning this more-or-less useless stuff...

Working with vendors...

[Jack9]

Useability isn't just about the consumer, the website has to make money and it really helps to have a less spartan design for more revenue opportunities. It's about balance and I can't fault sites for looking out for themselves at the expense of the consumer. Welcome to capitalism.

ANYTHING new and hyped....

[Lijemo]

There is a certain kind of designer that doesn't care about good design, but does care about anything that's new and "exiting" enough to generate buzzwords. There is another kind of designer that cares about good design and comes to new technology more thoughtfully.

Thus when ANYTHING is new and buzz-wordy, it will be thrown randomly at websites helter-scelter but the first type of designer. Meanwhile, thoughtful designers look for positive and useful ways to incorporate it.

If you go into a room full of people showing proper decorum except for one loud, obnoxious person, it is the loud obnoxious person that will stand out. Thus, at first, the throw-the-buzzword-at-the-screen examples of the new technology/trend will stand out.

Eventually, the buzzword people move onto the next buzzword. At this point, either the thoughtful designers have figured out how to incorperate the technology/trend into good design (in which case it just becomes part of the basic fabric of the web, like CSS)-- or else they haven't, and it goes the way of the BLINK tag and those animated-gif "under construction" things.

The fact that bad designers use the "next new thing" in really bad designs doesn't say anything one way or the other about what value the "next new thing" has to the web as a whole.

The philosophy of the Nielsen Norman Group...

[Browzer]

http://www.nngroup.com/about/

Good design is good design is good design

[einhverfr]

People always ask me what I think of new technology fads. I usually tell them to focus on concrete requirements and if they are doing it themselves, good engineering. The rest will take care of itself.

The more I look into people's definitions of Web 2.0, the more I am convinced that it is just Web 1.0 plus hype. There is absolutely nothing new here-- online community pages have been up for a long time. And any site that wants to make it on the internet has *always* had to build a community of users around the site. Sure we have a few more tools here (like AJAX) but these are only tools.

If you focus on making your site useful first, focus on giving people reasons to come back, and focus on accessibility in general, the rest will take care of itself.

Unfortunately this is a minority view (not here, but in the real world)...

Adobe Exchange was destroyed by Flash

[teamhasnoi]

After Adobe bought Macromedia, the Macromedia guys took the Adobe Exchange, a fast and functional html site devoted to plugins and extensions, and rewrote it to work in flash. Now, it's slow, impossible to navigate, scrolling is disabled, the 'back' button is broken, it won't let the user determine font size, and searches are slow and not relevant. That's just a few of the problems...

They've effectively locked new and old users out, and repeated pleas to bring back the old site have gone unheeded and the issues with the new site have been ignored. Where there was once a thriving community of third party additions, now there is a stagnant pool, as uploads have trickled to nothing.

Way to go Adobe - you've just killed your golden goose. Stop the madness of flash for flash's sake! (Don't be surprised if these links don't load, evidently Adobe purchased Fark's old servers.)

Re:Adobe Exchange was destroyed by Flash

[brantondaveperson]

Well....
That's partly true, certainly the fact that the scroll wheel doesn't work in the scrollable areas of the page is a huge problem with flash in general

BUT the main problem with it, and with use of flash in general, is that no-one seems capable or even aware that one can make full-page flash documents that scale properly. In the Exchange example, resizing of the page is essentially impossible. Flash provides plenty of support for full-page flash that no-one seems to ever use! Why is this?

Re:Jakob Nielsen

[eck011219]

It has long been my opinion that Jakob Nielsen is considered the leading authority on web usability because he keeps telling everyone he is. He takes it to an extreme -- graphic design is, to some extent, a part of usability design. They employ some of the same eye-tracking concepts, for one.

I find Jakob Nielsen's books to be difficult to rea, and his site even moreso. A lot of work goes into weeding out content from opinion and snotty "here's an example of what NOT to do" stuff. I read them, as usability is a part of my job and a major interest of mine. But there's a good middle ground to find that employs good, simple usable content AND relevant and unobtrusive design elements that clarify the content. Elsewhere in this thread it is stated that he practices what he preaches, and in many ways he does. But he preaches an almost ascetic method of usability design that ends up getting in the way as often as it helps.

Just my $.02, of course. I'm exhibiting an equally black-and-white opinion of Jakob Nielsen, so I understand that I could be a little over the top.

"Web 2.0" redesigns bad, async uses better

[Animats]

Tribe.net redesigned their home page to use "Web 2.0" around the beginning of 2007. Now users could drag the various boxes around, rearrange the home page, and choose which elements they wanted. (Except for the ads, of course, which were immovable.) The main effect was that "Tribe.net bug reports" became one of the most active groups. Tribe's traffic ratings in Alexa continued to slide.

There are uses for the asynchrony of XMLHttpRequest, though. Try our search and rating box. We have a site rating engine which rates sites on demand, and it takes takes about 8 to 30 seconds for sites it hasn't looked at yet. We needed a way to present this to the user without stalling the user's browsing.

So we needed a truly asynchronous web page, and we have one. When you enter text into the box and click the big "Search" button, the site gets all the results it can get from the databases immediately, and updates the page. The sites for which ratings aren't yet available show as rotating "busy" icons, which are replaced over the next few seconds as the server reads the target web site, rates it, and sends the ratings back to the browser.

If we did this with stock HTML, the whole thing would feel so sluggish as to be useless. But with a dynamic page, the user gets useful results immediately, which improve over the next 8 to 30 seconds. The user's browsing isn't stalled. In fact, if you enter something new into the search box while updates are in progress, outstanding XMLHttpRequest requests are aborted, and you can do a new search without waiting for old ratings to complete.

Few "Web 2.0" sites seem to support as much asynchrony. Google Maps is probably the best known site that really is asynchronous in a useful way.

Re:"Web 2.0" redesigns bad, async uses better

[Anonymous Coward]

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Moving Target

[The Nipponese]

I think the problem with Nielsen's argument is that what he considers the "basics" have changed over the last 10 years. As an anal graphic designer AND a huge MySpace fan, all this complaining about usability (or lack of) is just "old design" snobbery. Eventually people have to wake up and realize that just because it's ugly doesn't mean it's diffucult or 'not fun' to use.

Bottom line is that MySpace, to my knowledge, is the ONLY "web 2.0" site that allows (hacky) CSS and HTML to be manipulated by users at all levels. People who, 3 years ago, could barely turn a computer on are now blogging, posting pictures, e-mailing (albeit through the MySpace messaging service), and learning to write hypertext tags, specifically because of MySpace.

IMHO, in the "new" consumer-based web, the functionality IS the design, and it is NOT useless.

There is no future for "web 2.0"

[unity100]

And theres a total simple reason for that - the need to ensure content is delivered to the other side.

previously it was low bandwidth and specs of computers that prevented the bells and whistles of the kind in this "2.0" being put on websites/services - the visitor's bw and computer wouldnt been able to handle all the load, so they were very scarcely used.

now there is bandwidth. there is processing power. one would think that thing is solved now, and anyone could go on using cool widgets and whatnot in their sites.

on the contrary.

in the last 15 years, everything became more complicated. not only the number of programs that are installed on any computer and their diversity increased, but we also now have :

- Menacing viruses, trojans
- Hellish spam
- Valid privacy concerns ranging from simple cookie usage to self-installing toolbars and more
- Phishing, credit card fraud/stealing stuff
- Cross site scripting and other remote exploits

Some of these directly affect '2.0' stuff, some of them affect it combined with others.

To battle these, we have firewalls, anti-virus, trojan programs, privacy programs, all-in-ones, more and more os settings towards security, browser measures towards security and stuff.

So theres an increasingly complex environment being created in clients' computers with each passing year. To deliver any content, you have to pass through all these obstacles, and with any increasing amount of client-side running elements (javascript, activex and more) you introduce to this equation the lower your chances of getting to client gets.

and even when you reach the clients' screen, there is the problem of whether your content is being displayed as you want it to, or twisted due to interference from any "Security" and/or os stuff.

On the other hand of the spectrum, NO clients' computer refuses plain text data coming from a website.

So best bet for a website to reach the clients assuredly is to go for css, html and images in rendering the webpage that is prepared server-side, and then send it to client.

For anything on web, reach is of paramount importance. The less people you can reach due to ANYTHING, be it security concerns or low system specs, you lose business/exposure.

some sites and establishments can afford it. they are big. it wouldnt change much if they lost 5% of their visitors who utilize a site that brings the establishment, like, $2-3 income per visitor. that would still be a considerable amount if you ask accountants and economists, but, technology wise such an establishment can make this sacrifice for the sake of "coolness", which will be an investment in terms of popularity.

but, small sites and establishments, which constitute majority of the web can not afford this.

a small estore might be getting 1000 unique visitors a day, and it is probable that one of the lost 5%, 50 people, would place an order for thousands of dollars. same goes for consultancy companies, businesses and such, which do deals of tens of thousands of dollars with one source. for content sites that are just building up, losing 50 people a day might mean that they would be losing maybe 4-5 people who might be major contributors to site content.

so, web 2.0 MIGHT be an acceptable hype for big boys for now. Catch the emphasis here - FOR NOW.

it is DEFINITE that as the number of sites using client-side stuff increase, anti virus and security software will be forced to adapt to allow them. and the more stuff allowed to run client side, there will be more channels for hackers, trojaners, virus spreaders to exploit. hacking is one thing, but exploiting through already permitted channels is some other thing. you can do major stuff if you can get a channel to a client's computer that way. possibilities are endless.

so, for now hype around "2.0" might be continuing, but, sooner or later we will see the security side of the issue coming up on top. the longer it takes, the bigger the turmoil will be. already there are many concerns and cases that relate to client side stuff like activex, and i dont need to mention javascript, and more to follow.

Peronsalisaton?

[gilgongo]

From TFA: "He said sites peppered with personalisation tools were in danger of resembling the "glossy but useless" sites at the height of the dotcom boom."

Eh? Since when was personalisation a feature of Web 2.0? Surely that's a feature of the bad old days of Broadvision and all that crap. I can't think of any recent sites that focus on personalisation. In fact quite the opposite: it's all about being part of the crowd.

Google Groups 2.0ed-up

[Tablizer]

Google Groups (usenet) is an example of misuse of Web 2.0. Before that it had a pretty good HTML-based approach. Then they Ajaxified it, and it is clunky and jittery. It is hard to know whether a mouse-stroke "took" or not, and sometimes it resizes wrong. It just feels "unnatural".

Lesson: Use Ajax *only* when "traditional" HTML is not a reasonable match. Don't reinvent the wheel when you don't have to. There are good uses for Ajax-like stuff, but this was just not one of them. Somebody at Google is fad chasing.

Pure HTML

[chord.wav]

I'm against entirely Flash-made sites. Not even Macromedia has a full site made in Flash, they use it only for the menu and landing-page banners. They don't put content you need to read in there.

And they didn't yet come up with a simple solution for what IMHO are their main 4 problems:

1 - One URL, One page. In order to direct a friend to a specific product in a flash site you have to tell him things like: Go to this URL, then click products, then click the shoes number X. OK, this may be a development problem but they could make it very easy.

2 - Open links in new tabs/windows. This one is really annoying.

3 - Content indexing. It is currently possible, but yet more attention is drawn to a normal HTML page than to a flash site.

4 - Ability to copy/paste the text you are reading. This one is really a development problem but again, it can be made simpler.

Re:Pure HTML

[Anonymous Coward]

1 - One URL, One page. In order to direct a friend to a specific product in a flash site you have to tell him things like: Go to this URL, then click products, then click the shoes number X. OK, this may be a development problem but they could make it very easy. Well, one could easily generate a 'link to this product' link within the Flash movie - eg. www.example.com/flashpage.php?product=123 - and then feed that data into the flash movie through the object tag (since we're doing the activeContent generated tag dance anyway) so it could display the appropriate page.

2 - Open links in new tabs/windows. This one is really annoying. Agreed. I much prefer to load pages into a new tab instead, but many clients are obsessed with the idea of 'losing' visitors who click away to another site and never come back. Opening links in a new window reassures them, since their site is still there (being ignored) in the background.

3 - Content indexing. It is currently possible, but yet more attention is drawn to a normal HTML page than to a flash site. Since many flash sites generate content dynamically from a database, creating equivalent HTML pages for flash-less visitors and search engines is fairly easy. Convincing clients that it's necessary, however, is not so easy.

4 - Ability to copy/paste the text you are reading. This one is really a development problem but again, it can be made simpler. Simpler than selecting the option to make a textfield selectable in Flash?

Re: Pure HTML

[ALB1]

It is often companies (example: http://www.eres.fr/) in the luxury business that leave visitors on Flash-only websites. Their main concern:

• no alteration of presentation, the appearance is the same regardless of your screen resolution, browser agent, etc.
• limited copy protection, since you cannot copy paste text selections or images

Why can't they understand that the Web I want is a repository of browsable information ? Not a glossy stylish magazine with advertisments every other page and small-lettered content deeply buried inside !

"Pure HTML" : you said it all! Let's purify the Web!

(Forgive my english, I am a bit rusty on writing skill)

web architects

[chdig]

It used to be that an art director would build the design for websites, but with dynamic and active websites (Web2.0 if, we need to use that word), a web architect is the new boss needed to run the show. That is, someone who understands template-based programming and information workflow enough to develop a solid basis for the designers to take over and make things look pretty. Oh yeah, and this person should also be able to direct the programmers to organize things in a useful manner for the designers as well. Until companies catch on and begin hiring website directors with these qualifications, they'll just continue to roll out that static, oh so pretty and dumb sites that they always have been.

Re:web architects

[Shados]

In this day and age, an architect in general (and I mean a real software architect, not the kind who take on the architect role without even knowing a thing about the things you mentionned) are rare. Really rare. Rarer than that.

So an architect for emerging technologies is more or less inexistant, and the few that are found, get snatched at rediculously high salaries OR, total opposite, are being made fun at by people who don't know better and forced into lesser roles. Which means that most of these web applications and design jobs are done by architects who are either unfit for their job, or are specialized in a different kind of tech.

The later are the worse. Usually, architects who are responsible of large "Web 2.0" projects, aren't even knowledgeable of the web world. They're most of the time desktop clients based system architects. And thats always a disaster...

No duh...

[Attis_The_Bunneh]

I mean most of the features I've seen in the so-called Web 2.0 hype tend to be very hard to conceive in respect to that they're really not integrated well. I mean even AJAX has seriously flaws anyone can exploit (most hinging on injection of malicious code) with very little understanding of it. So, this is why I think it's best to minimize its use and just focus on more realistic interfaces online. If you need to get something done on your bank account, then use something that is relatively secure, where you can set some sort of permissions on it, but AJAX isn't it. That's why I'm quite glad my bank doesn't use this web 2.0 junk, seriously.

-- Brede

Web page aliasing issues.

[Animats]

That's right. "slashdot.com", which is a redirect, gets a low rating. Check "slashdot.org", the real site, which does better.

We're still having trouble with aliasing issues. Simply because A redirects to B doesn't mean that the people who run B also run A. Whether a redirect is entitled to the same rating as the actual site is a tough question. If yes, there are ways to exploit redirects through hostile pages. (Remember the problem with Google AdWords from last week.) If no, there are problems with sites that expose multiple names. We're working on ways to check validity of redirects. Thanks for the note.

Re:Web page aliasing issues.

[Anonymous Coward]

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Rating Date Site IP address Rated by
Not rated. 2007-04-14 22:04:19 66.35.250.150 SiteTruth 0.00
Not rated. 2007-04-12 20:25:21 66.35.250.150 SiteTruth 0.00

and a big question mark at the top of the generated report that apparently means:
Site ownership not clearly verified, or some issues exist with the business.

Re:Web page aliasing issues.

[Animats]

That's right. A "?" is our usual rating for a business that's been heard of, but with no street address on the site. Most major blogs and such get a "?" rating.

These ratings are most meaningful for shopping sites, ones that you're buying from online, where there's a legal obligation to clearly identify the business.

Re:Web page aliasing issues.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for the record

SiteTruth
for http://sitetruth.com/
Site rating
Rating: "Site ownership identified but not verified."

From http://www.sitetruth.com/about.html (Web site, medium confidence)
SiteTruth
999 Woodland Avenue
Menlo Park, CA 94025

        * postalcode = 94025
        * location = Menlo Park
        * countrycode = US
        * statecode = CA

Secure certificate
No valid certificate.

Domain www.sitetruth.com
SSL error during certificate validation (certificate verify failed)

No usable certificate available.
Contents of web site
Site "SiteTruth - know who you're dealing with"
Examined 2 web pages in 1.0 seconds.

      1. http://www.sitetruth.com/
      2. About

Street addresses found:

        * http://www.sitetruth.com/about.html (Web site, medium confidence)
            SiteTruth
            999 Woodland Avenue
            Menlo Park, CA 94025
                    o postalcode = 94025
                    o location = Menlo Park
                    o countrycode = US
                    o statecode = CA

PhishTank fraud database report
Not in PhishTank database.
Information from secondary sources
Commercial site.
Rating history
Rating Date Site IP address Rated by
Site ownership unknown or questionable. 2007-04-15 05:11:47 69.64.67.33 SiteTruth 0.00
Site ownership identified but not verified. 2007-04-14 13:31:24 69.64.67.33 SiteTruth 0.00

and a big question mark at the top of the generated report that means:
"Site ownership not clearly verified, or some issues exist with the business."

Re: archaic

[Anonymous Coward]

So once you have hundreds of pages developed in dreamweaver, it's very hard to move away from using dreamweaver. $reply = subst($parent,"dreamweaver","Word"); // heheh
Using Microsoft Frontpage makes what you say nigh IMPOSSIBLE.

Back on topic:
When Ye Olde Macromedia bought up Allaire Homesite, they gobbled and buried what was the best by-hand HTML editor on the market. Back in the Dreamweaver 3 & 4 days, all that Javascript hoojimawaja was best left as an "Action". I didn't want to know what it did... Just if it looked nice when I resized my NN4 window.

It's all well and good to say "I code by hand", you probably also "charge by the hour", why then do you not also "carve on clay tablets"? This notion of "good old days" purity and perfection is just a waste of time. HTMLTidy exists, use it. Text editors with colour coding and brace matching exist, use them. (Using a Mac? Go buy CSSEdit! NOW GORRAMIT!!!) You think an iGoogle page that's 99% Javascript was hacked together by some purple-haired kid wearing roller skates, over the lunch hour? IDE's exist, use them.

Humans use tools. I don't need Eclipse, and I have long been of the growing opinion that NVU is not a viable option for professionals. Dreamweaver is a perfectly viable multipurpose tool that will never get it all right, and offers about three times more cruft than I need, but has enough time-saving features to make it worth the fraction of a suite bundle that I need to buy anyway... I have CS3 to play with now. Joy! I think Adobe will take DW to better places than GoLive, and they drastically improved Flash right out of the gate.

Dreamweaver templates have always been a terrible solution. Contribute ain't much better, but in some cases it's the only way to maintain strict control over users posting content without resorting to a CMS, and all the security troubles a CMS brings. I like that all these tools exist, even if I think they're (for the) stupid. What bothers me is the constant monopoly merging, reducing the choice. R.I.P. Homesite.

Cheers

Personally ...

[PPH]

... I welcome our impending Web 3.0 overlords.

Nielsen is a twit

[startling]

Nielsen's own site is so poorly designed that it's clear he knows nothing whatsoever about design. I'm amazed he gets the publicity he does. How dare this buffoon comment on web design?

Jakob Nielsen talking DESIGN????

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF does he know about design? Ancient and pathetic UI != design. What an idiot.

Usability shouldn't be a priority at all

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I'll grant at any time that usability is the number one priority.

I won't.

For a business, making money is probably the number one priority. For a personal home page, maybe staying in touch with friends is the number one priority. For a non-profit, maybe raising awareness and informing people about the organisation is the number one priority.

But usability? Usability is merely a means to an end. It is nothing without the end itself.

HTML Tidy is your friend

[VGfort]

I use that to clean up templates a lot, of course I have to fix a few things again, but its better than dealing with whatever late 90s/early 00s WYSIWYG Table based monstrosity.

Feedback from user actions must be immediate

[Animats]

It is hard to know whether a mouse-stroke "took" or not, and sometimes it resizes wrong. It just feels "unnatural".

We ran into that problem with our search/rating box. When you click on the search button, nothing visible happened immediately, confusing the user while the request was going out to the server and back. So we put "Searching..." and "Rating..." into the result area immediately when a request is made, for immediate feedback. Even though that text is often replaced with real results so fast you sometimes don't even see it, it's worth doing if there's any possibility of a delay of more than a second.

Do this on your web commerce sites, if they have an interface that doesn't load a new page. It beats those stupid "Don't push the BUY button more than once or you may be billed twice" messages.

No convention seems to be emerging for this.

Re:Feedback from user actions must be immediate

[Tablizer]

The best solution would be a partial hour-glass mouse cursor in my opinion. This is the cursor with an arrow but a small hour glass next to it. I don't see it used as much these days for some reason. Those kinds of things are what I miss about rich-client kits. I still think they are possible on the web, but we need a better standard.

Agreed

[EoN604]

Not too much to add to this, but wanted to register my vote as - I AGREE, 100%. Web Designers who know how to design web pages properly will know why. Bosses and sales guys wont. It's like "that guy" from Futurama. (The 80's guy). "Delivery has nothing to do with the delivery business!". Well actually, it's nothing like that at all, but how funny was that guy! 80's style! "We can dance, dum dum dum dum dum dum du-dum dum!'

Re: archaic

[stridebird]

Thanks for mentioning Homesite, that was a great suite. I was very sad to see it swallowed up into DW and then languish - they never integrated it or advanced it thereafter, to my knowledge. Just another case of the big eating the small for self protection. Quality suffered that day.

Re:Jakob Nielsen

[Bastard of Subhumani]

A lot of work goes into weeding out content from opinion and snotty "here's an example of what NOT to do" stuff.

For that, I prefer to go here.

useit.com vs realtor.com

[Reziac]

Another point -- show me where graphics would in any way improve useit.com?? It has no need for them; it's informative reading material that generally needs no illustration. So regardless about what he says about his own site, IMO it largely follows his own rules -- it keeps things simple and streamlined *wherever there is no need to make them complex*. (As a visitor, my only real complaint is that the Alertbox Archive link needs to be more prominent, cuz I can never remember what it's called when I'm looking for it.)

I just got done waving a few Alertbox columns at realtor.com, which in the 7-8 years I've been using it has never been a paragon, but a few days ago went live with a new interface that has cut the site's functionality in half: A great many things that used to work no longer work (and relevancy of search results is now a fraction of what it used to be, probably as a result of interfacing more poorly with the database); the interface has somehow become cluttered enough that a lot of control points are now hard to see; and it now runs/loads at a small fraction of its former already-ponderous speed. I had quite an argument on the phone this morning with someone from realtor.com's management. But they've invested a "whole year" in the new interface, and by damn they're keeping it, no matter how many people can't even figure out how to complain about it!!

(I can tell you why they're "not getting any complaints" -- the feedback popup is small enough that the Submit button isn't visible, AND it doesn't scroll. You have to know enough to enlarge the WINDOW before you can see the Submit button at all. Yet the window has no visible controls -- you have to know enough to drag the corner. How many people expect that of a web popup?)

I totally disagree with Jacob Nielsen

[hiteshmehta]

I was completely shocked to read such an article at the BBC site, Mr. Jacob Nielsen, known as the usability guru has something to say on web2.0 and design.

Below are my answer to each of his statements mentioned, one can read the blog at http://hiteshmehta.in/?p=8 for details.

Today, the dynamic web pages are not made in any rush hour, plenty of man hours goes in to research and a lot of effort is being put in by the group of experts to make the NEXT web2.0 product / web site totally user-friendly and easy going with the millions of users on the web.

Experts from various streams like research analyst, hardcore technical guys, business development managers, investors, Artificial Intelligence experts, SEO specialists and many others are today extremely involved in making a successful web2.0 product.

Web2.0 does not start or end with Glossy sites. Making your web2.0 powered website does not require any glossy buttons and interface. The designers today should not confuse themselves by looking at the web2.0 sites and feeling that adding a gloss button would categorize their website under web2.0.

Personalization tool, in fact this is what the USP of any web2.0 site is, how effectively you get your information and fantastic use of technology from your desktop. Everything is served to you with just a click and some amount of customization makes your life easier. Earlier for various information you need to go to various website and collect/read data.

One of the finest example of web2.0 'personalization tool' is NetVibes.com and without neglecting the good design and usability. I have been using netvibes.com right from the beginning. Every minute I get fresh news, fresh feeds from the dozens of sites I subscribed at netvibes. This is simply amazing and is getting better and better everyday.

A site, which is easy to use, good search tools, text free jargon, usability and lots more. I vote DIGG.com at this point. A highly used website by millions of users which is so good to use and you don't have to actually search for anything latest but it gives you the information which is most active, most voted and widely discussed with the registered members. On the usability side they are genius and one can understand this well only after registering with digg.com and using it.

The primary things of today's web users is to get the solution, solution which is feasible, accurate, master solution and all this is possible today just by dynamic web pages, community based sites, user generated tools, wherein everybody can be part of this and is well moderated by the owners of web2.0 sites. We just need to look at what we need first and what is more important to us. Nobody here is criticizing with the evolution of web2.0; everyone likes it, learning it and will be using it.

Talking about demographics and statistics, people who contributes, occasionally contributes and never contributes does not matter at all. If 90% of users do not contribute, they gather the information for which they go online and look out for sites, which provides useful and efficient information. The number of users are growing enormously everyday and making the web2.0 work for them. Most people get in, get in and get out only after they have found a solution. People are getting in every second at web2.0 sites, which are made popular by other users.

Come on! Let us be more practical today, people still talking about web2.0 failure and criticizing on this is not and will never make a difference. A lot of people are already talking about web3.0 today. If one has to wait and wait until someone comes and spoon-feeds you about what exactly web2.0 is then...? I don't have anything more to say.

To conclude:

Is Web 2.0 'neglecting good design'? ABSOLUTELY NOT AND I TOTALLY DISAGREE WITH MR.JACOB NIELSEN.
Web2.0 actually gives the designers a new platform, a new challenge and opportunity by producing the best product/websit

Re: archaic

[khristian]

IDEs aren't bad - it's just some of them that make weird things with what you told them to do :P I'd stick with Eclipse, it simply makes typing the page easier.