Poll

What irritates you the most?

Sticky/Fixed: Headers/Nav Toolbars and Widgets
2 (3.5%)
Dimming overlays
1 (1.8%)
Excessive fake loading spinners/animations
1 (1.8%)
Animated skeleton placeholders & shimmers (FLASHING & CPU HOGGER/slows page load via gradient cycling)
0 (0%)
Chat bots
5 (8.8%)
Autoplay sound and video
6 (10.5%)
Gradients over video, pictures and thumbnails
0 (0%)
Flash/fade/dimming transition elements on page load
0 (0%)
ALL OF THE ABOVE and BELOW (except the last two options)
20 (35.1%)
Page view manipulation: Content jumping/page shift/shrink or expand.
4 (7%)
Interference such as Scrolljacking and Clickjacking
1 (1.8%)
Website set to hide contents based on useragent or other
1 (1.8%)
Websites set to discriminate based on country
0 (0%)
Cookie notices
5 (8.8%)
Aggressive advertising: dialogues or same ad on either sides flashing & targeting across platforms
5 (8.8%)
Excessive white spaces
1 (1.8%)
Inappropriately/oversized text or graphics: large & small by relation or ratio
1 (1.8%)
Auto action & mouse hover: Popouts, overlays & expanding, zooming out thumbnail, audio, video autoplay, preview
0 (0%)
Suggestions, predictive texting and history in or under search & text input box
1 (1.8%)
Clickbait trolling: Paywall, authwall, signup (excluding article view limit)
2 (3.5%)
Flash/fade/moving(appearing and disappearing) popout widgets/sliders: xx people viewed this item
0 (0%)
Infinite scrolling
1 (1.8%)
Not sure
0 (0%)
Prefer not to say
0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 37

Author Topic: Bad/bloated web design  (Read 69138 times)

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Online Ranayna

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #100 on: July 28, 2021, 07:35:09 pm »
Yeah, the refreshrate on LCDs is, in my opinion, overrated.
I have screens with 144Hz, but while i can see the difference when concentrating on it, it is not really noticable in normal use. And i regularly have the difference, since my work notebook can only do 60 Hz in dualscreen mode, while my desktop does 144Hz.
And i agree: modern screens are *way* to bright. I have reduced the brightness on mine to 0, and they are more than bright enough.
 

Offline MrMobodiesTopic starter

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #101 on: August 07, 2021, 01:37:23 am »
PCMAG did away with the uncloseable fixed header on the website.

I noticed it when it didn't just disappear (normally hidden by extension) but scrolled inline with everything else.

2020:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200604203637/https://uk.pcmag.com/sound-cards/127238/corsair-discovers-fault-causing-sf-series-power-supplies-to-fail


2021:
https://uk.pcmag.com/sound-cards/127238/corsair-discovers-fault-causing-sf-series-power-supplies-to-fail


Much better that's what I call an improvement.

Isn't that nice?

I remembered when Ebay tried this last year on the main page with some other navigation thing that changes appearance on scroll.
That's on ARchive to:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200913012152/https://www.ebay.co.uk/


It affected the main navigation bar, once it got hidden on scrolling down it didn't always restore the main nav bar when scrolling back to the top with the HeaderHiderFixer chrome extension.

If it was hidden with the bookmark killer it also hid the main navigation bar.


I complained to the concierge service about it's size, distraction and how I class it as "spammy behaviour" as totally unwanted and an intrusion comparing to Yahoo but in this case it caused problems with hiding it. A couple of weeks later they reverted it back to absolute positioning but changed the colour to black (fine by me) for a couple of days (doesn't seem to be on archive) and reverted back to white to the way it was before.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201006051833/https://www.ebay.co.uk/


If only they had a close button or an option on these things like on archive.org and Duckduckgo I'd find it a lot more pleasant and respectful for my viewing preferences.
« Last Edit: August 07, 2021, 01:49:22 am by MrMobodies »
 
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Offline Slartibartfast

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #102 on: August 23, 2021, 09:18:55 pm »
Yeah, the refreshrate on LCDs is, in my opinion, overrated.
For any serious work, yes. For gamers quite possibly not. You get a high-refresh rate screen on your office machine because manufacturers do not bother to produce two types of screens. High-refresh rate caters for everybody.

Quote
And i agree: modern screens are *way* to bright.
No, they are not. Not every study is as dimly lit as yours. In a study with a lot of daylight you want a bright screen. I'm very satisfied with the brightness of my LCD screens.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #103 on: August 24, 2021, 06:35:15 pm »
No, they are not. Not every study is as dimly lit as yours. In a study with a lot of daylight you want a bright screen. I'm very satisfied with the brightness of my LCD screens.

It's nice when they are capable of being very bright, but I frequently encounter a problem where screens are incapable of being dim enough. If I wake up at night and want to check something on my phone it is blinding even at the lowest setting. My laptop also doesn't go dim enough for some situations.
 

Offline PlainName

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #104 on: August 24, 2021, 09:49:36 pm »
Sunglasses by your bed  8)

I think too bright is much like too cold - it's more fixable than being too dim or too hot.
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #105 on: August 25, 2021, 05:01:55 pm »
But I shouldn't have to work around it, it is not technically difficult to make a very wide dynamic range with a backlight, there is no lower bound for LED drive current. I'm sure the challenge is that they're using PWM, but they could very easily add something to reduce the current for a low range. I have a heat pump in my house so I can easily fix both the too hot and too cold situation, technological solutions exist to all of these problems.
 
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Offline MrMobodiesTopic starter

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #106 on: September 20, 2021, 02:09:51 am »
I was looking around out of interest on Argos and their cost of things and it looks to me like it has taken a turn for the worst with all that animated skeleton placeholder UI crap, the spinners and the dimming overlays.

I found some animated "loader" element stuff that flashes and cover up the contents underneath AFTER they had been loaded. I thought how can they be so stupid.
Doesn't seen affect the postcode stuff of changing stores with that animation thing hidden.




Do you think that is just stupid? They place a flashy animated thing over it ... It looks pretence to me and seems to do absolutely nothing useful but set to flash over the already loaded content after every page load thereby becoming a visually nuisance to me.

Long story short:
Quote
argos.co.uk##._1wB7G
argos.co.uk##rect[role="presentation"]
argos.co.uk##rect[clip-path="url(#alternatives-title-diff)"]
argos.co.uk##rect[style="fill: url(\"#alternatives-title-animated-diff\") none;"]
argos.co.uk##component-att-modal-overlay
argos.co.uk###haas-ac-results
argos.co.uk##._1d3T8
argos.co.uk###uyqbr9-aria
argos.co.uk##.fulfilment-msg-panel
argos.co.uk##.haas-ac-results
argos.co.uk##.Drawerstyles__Overlay-sc-7kh0ae-7.efpEUu
argos.co.uk##.Drawerstyles__Overlay-sc-7kh0ae-7
argos.co.uk##.Modalstyles__Container-ibf6bf-0.emkOrN
argos.co.uk##.Modalstyles__Container-ibf6bf-0
argos.co.uk##.LoadingSpinnerstyles__Container-jh1ih-0
argos.co.uk##.LoadingSpinnerstyles__Container-jh1ih-0.dYCOju
argos.co.uk###loading-spinner
argos.co.uk###pc-content-loader--default-aria
argos.co.uk##.ProductCardSkeletonstyles__Wrapper-sc-1id8e4v-0
argos.co.uk##.StickyBarstyles__Container-o4nv2n-0.ktSTRj
argos.co.uk##alternatives-title-aria
argos.co.uk##.ProductCardSkeletonstyles__Wrapper-sc-1id8e4v-0.deUngk
argos.co.uk##.ProductCardSkeletonstyles__Wrapper-sc-1id8e4v-0
argos.co.uk##.StickyBarstyles__Container-o4nv2n-0.ktSTRj
argos.co.uk#.eJPuED.StoreSelectorstyles__ModalOverlay-sc-764iux-4
argos.co.uk##.tagg-reset.tagg-balloon.tagg-quantity_orders.tagg-QP
argos.co.uk##.tagg-reset.tagg-balloon.tagg-audience.tagg-RAP

Would someone like to test out https://www.Argos.co.uk and then with the adblock elements above and compare to see if these things are really needed on the page?
« Last Edit: September 20, 2021, 06:18:52 pm by MrMobodies »
 

Offline Tomorokoshi

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #107 on: September 22, 2021, 04:51:28 pm »
My latest "favorite":
https://ec.kemet.com/resources/white-papers/

Authors get paid by the word.
Programmers get paid by the line.
Web page developers get paid by the white space.
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #108 on: September 23, 2021, 02:04:29 am »
Gives me a headache just looking at it. Light gray on all that blinding bright white. The bright white UI trend reminds me of standing in the middle of a brilliantly lit empty warehouse with a plain white floor, white walls and white ceiling.
 
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Offline MrMobodiesTopic starter

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #109 on: September 23, 2021, 10:30:19 am »
Joke: I see, so like with Argos the web page developers are getting paid to cover over the content with "the white spaces" such as that animated skeleton placeholder thing that flashes on and off.
 

Offline bd139

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #110 on: September 23, 2021, 10:54:56 am »
I'm not going to post it here but our corp web site is the worst. The stuff all slides into view as you scroll it and you have to scroll at least 5 times. And there's about 50 words on the front page entirely and a graphic design which I can only describe as "abstract space minion dressed in bad 1970s palette". No one has ever heard of us or knows what we do, this isn't helping and the entire executive and marketing team are clapping and back patting like an army of demented seals over it.

What's more is I'm sure our existing customers didn't want to have to pay for it.
 

Offline madires

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #111 on: September 23, 2021, 01:26:35 pm »
Two decades ago we were worried about HTML editors and frameworks creating too bloated webpages. :-DD Today we have bloat³pages. But hey, they look nice. And we have a reason to upgrade our internet access - to be able to keep up with that bloat. Maybe we should impose a CO2 tax for bloatpages.
 

Offline mc172

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #112 on: September 23, 2021, 01:34:03 pm »
My latest "favorite":
https://ec.kemet.com/resources/white-papers/

Authors get paid by the word.
Programmers get paid by the line.
Web page developers get paid by the white space.

I love how it takes excessively long when scrolling to load a few more instances of the same picture that is already loaded (4 times) and a handful of words!
 

Offline bd139

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #113 on: September 23, 2021, 01:36:01 pm »
Two decades ago we were worried about HTML editors and frameworks creating too bloated webpages. :-DD Today we have bloat³pages. But hey, they look nice. And we have a reason to upgrade our internet access - to be able to keep up with that bloat. Maybe we should impose a CO2 tax for bloatpages.

That actually sort of exists at the moment. Basically everyone moved to AWS which charges a fortune for outbound bandwidth. Some of my day job is keeping those costs managed which I charge a lot for  :popcorn:

What we need now is “requester bills” ie the client charges the server of the content for watts burned on the client to recompile and render their shit on every click.

I had an argument about a year ago on HN about this. Someone took offence to me adblocking to keep garbage off my shit and stop using my electricity up. They demanded that was a bad idea and it’d hurt their business. So basically it told them that the only valuable content they were shipping were adverts and they should shut down. I got a sob story.  They got told “boo fucking hoo”. This resulted in me being hellbanned again  :-DD
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #114 on: September 24, 2021, 05:02:13 am »
Even worse than the blinding white trend is something I'm seeing more and more, you simply mouse over the wrong area of the screen and a great huge menu/overlay pops up obstructing what you're trying to see. It's absolutely obnoxious, I cannot for the life of me figure out what anyone is thinking when they implement something like that. Nothing should ever pop up just by moving the mouse pointer around.
 
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Offline bd139

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #115 on: September 24, 2021, 06:38:39 am »
I think that’s probably because all the designers I see seem to have 32” 4K monitors. Us mere mortals tend not to.
 

Offline SilverSolder

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #116 on: September 24, 2021, 11:02:15 am »
I think that’s probably because all the designers I see seem to have 32” 4K monitors. Us mere mortals tend not to.

Even with a big monitor, modern web designer can't seem to make use of more than a handful of pixels at a time.

E.g. the example referenced by @Tomorokoshi ( https://ec.kemet.com/resources/white-papers/ ) manages to display one row of tabular data per page on a 24" monitor...

These guys should really find a job designing baby toys for Fisher-Price and stay away from internet design entirely!

 

Offline PlainName

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #117 on: September 24, 2021, 11:29:07 am »
Quote
you simply mouse over the wrong area of the screen and a great huge menu/overlay pops up obstructing what you're trying to see.

Yep, hate that. Just as bad when the popup isn't an overlay and the contents move to accommodate it.

Another favourite hate is when there is no dead space . That is, you can't click anywhere in the window without triggering something - even the white space triggers whatever it surrounds. The designers must never switch away to do something and then use a mouse click to get focus back to the window.
 

Offline MrMobodiesTopic starter

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #118 on: September 24, 2021, 08:21:14 pm »
Quote
you simply mouse over the wrong area of the screen and a great huge menu/overlay pops up obstructing what you're trying to see.

Yep, hate that. Just as bad when the popup isn't an overlay and the contents move to accommodate it.

I hid one of those yesterday that was behind a dialogue:
account.microsoft.com##.ms-Overlay.ms-Overlay--dark.root-361

And some some weeks ago:
travisperkins.co.uk##.Search__SearchOverlay-sc-17h69re-4.kxZlVg
screwfix.com##.lb-overlay.js--close-Lightbox

If they are the child elements I will hide them when possible.

I'd like one day to make a Greasemonkey script to deal with them in such a way that when the overlays are set as the parent element it doesn't also kill the dialogues or whatever is underneath.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #119 on: September 25, 2021, 12:03:34 am »
The worst one I encounter regularly is the local news site https://komonews.com/. If you happen to mouse over the nav bar at the top an overlay pops up that obstructs the entire screen and sometimes it's hard to make it go away. I cannot even fathom why somebody thought that was desirable behavior. 20 years ago they had a very nice clean site that just worked.
 

Offline MrMobodiesTopic starter

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #120 on: September 25, 2021, 04:51:27 am »
The worst one I encounter regularly is the local news site https://komonews.com/. If you happen to mouse over the nav bar at the top an 1 overlay pops up that 2 obstructs the entire screen.

Give these a try with Ublock/Adblock:

1 Hide background dimming overlays:
Quote
komonews.com##.HamburgerHeader-module_Background__3V3I
komonews.com###sidebar-overlay-lightbox-7094b472-8383-4bc8-bc22-7623d81ef35c-1632541368741
komonews.com##.fb_lightbox-overlay.fb_lightbox-overlay-fixed
komonews.com##.fb_lightbox-overlay
komonews.com##.fb_lightbox-overlay-fixed
komonews.com###pop-div08593586493368142
komonews.com##.truste_overlay
consent-pref.trustarc.com##.gwt-Image
consent-pref.trustarc.com##[src="images/loader.gif"]
seattlerefined.com###pop-div0998072506697314
seattlerefined.com##.truste_overlay
##.truste_overlay
##[src="images/loader.gif"]

2 Hide submenu popouts (content seems to already be displayed when clicking navigation items to the next page a bit like the not needed Ebay Basket and purchase bar that I hid:)
Quote
komonews.com##.HamburgerHeader-module_SubnavLinkWrapper__OMHl.hamburgerNavFooter-theme
komonews.com##.TeaserRow-module_TeaserRowWrapper__3VRF
komonews.com###js-SubNav-Container
komonews.com##DIV[style="position: relative; overflow: scroll; margin-right: -16px; margin-bottom: -16px; min-height: 16px; max-height: 655px;"]
komonews.com##.HamburgerHeader-module_SubnavWrapper__3siD
komonews.com##.HamburgerHeader-module_UserContentWrapper__3ir2
komonews.com##.hamburgerNavFooter-theme.HamburgerHeader-module_SubnavLinkWrapper__OMHl
komonews.com##.Spinner-module_spinner__1q2E


Unfortunately when these two elements below (also listed somwhere above) are hidden (background popout frame) it also kills the Hamburger menu content on the top left when activated by clicking it where it does nothing.
Quote
komonews.com##.HamburgerHeader-module_SubnavWrapper__3siD
komonews.com##DIV[style="position: relative; overflow: scroll; margin-right: -16px; margin-bottom: -16px; min-height: 16px; max-height: 655px;"]
« Last Edit: September 25, 2021, 05:26:04 am by MrMobodies »
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #121 on: September 28, 2021, 01:05:22 am »
With enough messing around I'm sure I could block it, but usually that sort of thing has side effects and then every time they make changes to the page it breaks it. I really would like if that stupid trend just went away since that news site is not the only place that does it, it's just the most reliably annoying example I could think of.
 
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Offline MrMobodiesTopic starter

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Re: Bad/bloated web design Google transition opacity fade
« Reply #122 on: September 28, 2021, 07:02:43 am »
Well here's another trend I find stupid like this one I think from some parts of the Cisco site that delayed the page for about a second last year and just a day ago Google search.

Code: [Select]
cisco.com##.cdc.no-nav-wc.ready
cisco.com##.cdc.no-nav-wc
cisco.com##.spinner-wheel

It intermittently started to fade/flash yesterday and now seems permanent when changing the input text and search.



Hiding ###Stev-9 (that fades the content) just hides the results so that's a shame.

I find that very annoying.

See attachment it changes the string and includes "animation" and "transition".

The page load before seems very quick so I wonder why does it need to be there?
Transitioning from page to page wasn't a problem for me before until now where they set it flash or fade or whatever it is called.

I have an old copy of Chrome 79 (running a number of profiles) for testing stuff and it doesn't seem to do it on any of those at the moment apart from Vivaldi.

On the other hand, DuckduckGo that seems to be showing more relevant results to I am looking for.

Just checked and didn't do it on my other computer running Vivladi.
Cleared cache and it stopped doing it, maybe they were experimenting some days ago, withdrew it but it stayed in cache.
« Last Edit: September 28, 2021, 07:21:23 am by MrMobodies »
 

Offline bitwelder

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #123 on: September 28, 2021, 08:36:39 am »
Even worse than the blinding white trend is something I'm seeing more and more, you simply mouse over the wrong area of the screen and a great huge menu/overlay pops up obstructing what you're trying to see.
Oh, that reminds me of another annoying feature of 'modern' websites: THE CHAT BOT.
Maybe you know exactly which sequence of menus you have to select to find the information you want but no, the chat bot pops up and begs you to ask something...  |O
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: Bad/bloated web design
« Reply #124 on: September 30, 2021, 08:26:07 pm »
Oh, that reminds me of another annoying feature of 'modern' websites: THE CHAT BOT.
Maybe you know exactly which sequence of menus you have to select to find the information you want but no, the chat bot pops up and begs you to ask something...  |O

OMG yes, those chat bots are universally useless, it is downright insulting that companies think they will be in any way helpful or a useful replacement of a real person. It's even more insulting that they try to make them look like they are actual people.
 
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