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Bad/bloated web design

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MrMobodies:
Do you find that a lot of modern web design becomes a bit too much that is claustrophobic?

Take a look at https://www.scan.co.uk/
It is becoming to a point now that they are meddling with contrast effects on parts of the page and it is hurting my eyes.
After every search it goes from dark to light.
It does nothing but hides what I am looking at.
Amazon did that and I added the element to the block list but it doesn't work well with Scan.
If I remove the element it goes away but add it to Adblock and the page disappears.

I wanted to look around for some ATX power supplies but already I got a headache just after a couple of minutes.

The only reason I started to use Adblock is kill this kind of thing and the suggestions or anything that pops out and annoys but I think that is a good example.
I only use Fanboy's list of annoyances.

Check out the second image when I turn off Adblock with some of the other rubbish I hid.
Like that description and "Add to Basket" bar is so much more important that about 1/5 no sorry 1/6th of top the area is taken up over the contents whilst serving as a distraction.

MrMobodies:
I have switched off Javascript to see what would happen and it looks a lot better and no flashing.
I didn't expect it to work or be able to search.

Now I can see what I am doing.

Not sure if the checkout will work.

Do you think I am being too fussy?

Whales:
Not at all.

There are no working negative feedback loops between users and sites.  Voltage offsets.  They can claim to care about users, but really all they give a damn about is looking fashionable and earning money.

More than a decade ago we had the popup apocalypse, a situation so poor that browser vendors actually started blocking those things.  Then advertising became menace (malware, animation, slowing pages, privacy) so whole civilisation of ad blockers was born. 

Now we're in the age javascript abominations.  When you write a plain HTML page:  adding javascript and CSS can only make it harder to read from there.  A good designer knows this and uses restraint.   Flashy bars, narrow text columns, "lightbox" interactions (where the page gets darkened), pages that don't scroll like every other page, low-contrast font-background colour pairs and ten things to click through before your get to the page.

I thought that the <blink> and <marquee> tags were dead because they were annoying, now we're just found more evolved ways of preventing people from using your page.



If I can't read your shitty website then I'm the only person left that can fix it. 

(1) I browse most websites with JS disabled (via the exten Ublock Origin).    This decrapifies a good 50% of sites.

(2) For those that refuse to work without JS: I use my own home-grown extension to disable CSS when I hit Shift+Alt+A.  Often a website flat-out refuses to unhide itself until the javascript executes, this fixes it with a single keypress and no other effort on my part.

Google AMP pages are an interesting example of this, where the CSS intentionally hides the page for (11?) seconds or until JS executes. 

This same key shortcut also fixes sites that use fixed-width text columns.  I can tolerate some of this, but on a widescreen monitor I hate having to scroll every 3 paragraphs to read your news article.  Especially when the whole article fits on one screen after I disable your CSS.


(3) Then there are the websites that are still shite and demand JS to do anything.

If I don't visit that site often: my Shift+Alt+A CSS disabler is useful.  I also have a second shortcut (Shift+Alt+X) that simply disables "position:absolute" elements (bits of the page that don't move when you scroll, like header bars) and fixed-width text; so I can keep most of the website's layout and theming intact.

If it's a website I visit often then I occasionally write proper CSS fixes and use the "Stylus" addon make them permanent.  On youtube I completely de-pad (shrink) the search bar, and prevent it from following me as I scroll down the page:




Anyway, I'll stop rambling.  If anyone is interested in my key-shortcut addon I can upload it to the Firefox addons website (it might work on Chrome too).

Nominal Animal:

--- Quote from: Whales on November 01, 2018, 07:22:46 am ---I browse most websites with JS disabled
--- End quote ---
I've used NoScript and Adblock+/uBlock Origin for over a decade now.

Whenever I see what others are used to seeing, it reminds me that I could not do that. It's not a matter of "just accepting it as it is" for me: the choice is either I use the tools to filter the extraneous noise to an acceptable level, or I won't use web at all.

While I am not a graphic designer (I don't have the "eye" for that), I have worked with really good ones to build websites and web-based tools, and actually know a lot about the technical/scientific side of the user interface design (as in actual research and findings, not just opinions). I am tempted to start a rant how even this "use a separate box to post a comment, clicking preview to see how it'd look like" is a horrible easy hack that people have just gotten used to, while there are much better ways to implement it.  But, because most peoples' response is a shrug, or maybe "I don't mind", I'll quiet down now.

bd139:
I write web apps a lot of the time. I have done since the web appeared in the 1990s.

I have seen a massive decline in front end quality in the last decade and you know why?

Sometimes stuff is actually just done and people have a fear of that. Once it's done they're of no value.

Thus the "never done" attitude is what happens. Thus what do you do to something that is done? Shovel more features into it. Next thing you know your web site looks like an Indian train, except less useful.



And on top of that there are predators everywhere. These predators come in two forms:

1. The marketers.
2. The framework pushers.

The marketers want your entire web site to look like the depiction in Futurama:



The framework pushers are the real criminals. These guys want to sell you a product ecosystem and training which gives you magical powers. Unfortunately they are literally selling you a lock in which costs your business a lot of money when you need to step outside the box for a moment or the ivory tower framework pimps have sold up and moved to a beach somewhere. While you're using it your customers are paying for the crimes in data volume, abysmal performance.

If you have to break the browser to make a site usable then the site is broken.

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