That country selector that is all the country flags of the world in greyscale with colours only shown on mouse-over deserves a special mention.
Not really a problem if you're just entering garbage information, but try to find the proper flag if you actually want the correct one. Bonus points if you are one of the many lucky citizens born under a flag that consists of three horizontal or vertical areas of equal size.
I have always dreamed of creating a country dropdown that was not in alphabetical order and contained historical countries/territories/empires that don't exist anymore. This is even better though.
I got a good laugh out of this for a few seconds before getting actually frustrated with it.
Mostly because my bank does a lot of these terrible things.
I had this happen today, in the wild, after visiting a HN linked Wired article. A few seconds on the page, a banner appears, blocking about a quarter of the page. Close it, start reading the article. 30 seconds later, the original banner reappears, again blocking a quarter of the page, and I close it again. I continue reading, think I hit a "click to read more button", another click. Keep reading, maybe two thirds of the way through the article, get bombarded with a modal dialog asking me subscribe to an email newsletter.
Who the fuck is implementing these things and how do they justify this shit as contributing to the user experience? I came to your aite to read an article, not to be bombarded with ridiculously distracting prompts, banners and subscribe prompts - and this completely ignoring the intrusiveness of the ads with autoplaying video and audio.
Shit like this really makes me rethink visiting sites like Wired, though they are by far not the only ones doing this, just the one that happened to me today.
Why do web devs think this a good thing to do? Pull this crap in a desktop, sure as he'll would uninstall.
Reminds me of Marc Canter's online social network "PeopleAggregator": "sort of like a MySpace in a box", "we support Facebook import/export!" -- aka "PeopleAggravator"!
Intro to PeopleAggregator (turn your volume down first)
It's genius. It's got a little "online services" icon with a friendly smiley face with a microphone and headphones.
You click on it, expecting an interactive chat but what you actually get is a photo of someone smiling hugely with headphones on and a laptop open, and a sidebar where you can search their inadequate help documents.
I'm glad it's a parody or it would be really insulting.
Oh I definitely recognise this, it's using Microsoft's Bot Framework (https://dev.botframework.com/). I had to make a chatbot for a hospital during my end of studies internship.
I still don't get why people want chatbots as they're terrible UI, so frustrating to use even when they're made properly.
I about fell off my chair laughing with how slow closing the "how can we help" popover was. If I had to write a backstory for this I'd say some dev was really proud of animating that and wanted to make sure everyone noticed it.
Right? Every new web developer that first learns how to do animations REALLY over does them.
It's like how elementary school kids write their "papers" in comic sans (and eight other fonts half-way through) and each word is a different color. Or they make a power point and every-single-dang-thing just HAS to spin into the slide.
Oh god I’ve had this happen before. At my first job our CEO was so proud of the splash screen she designed that she asked me to slow down the apps loading time by three seconds.
Seriously? There's tons of stuff missing, at the very least a cookie banner ("we value your privacy not") and "aw, snap, we're having probs to bla blah blah" and social media icons. Also, it's known that call-to-actions must come in a group of three, and have cute vectors. See [1] on how to do a website.
This was okay, but if you want to see how the pros do it, try to apply for a Russian visa on their Australian web site.
Things I remember:
- Not being able to enter my correct date of birth. At all. So you enter an incorrect date to get to the next screen, which is "I certify all information to be true and correct"
- Having to list the personal details of every relative living in Russia. Where do you stop?
- Having to list the details of every foreign trip you made in the last 10 years
And if you try to phone in to ask for help: you are advised that the phone is answered on one day of the week, between 9 am and 12 noon. You get that message until 8:59, from 9:00 you get "all the lines are busy, you have been placed in a call queue" which changes back to the original at 12:00.
Brilliant! Captures every frustration I have ever had with stupid-ass, half-baked web forms. Is there a form in there that messes up with your autofill? That could be a nice addition. I couldn't make it past the 1st form. I could feel my heartbeat go up as I was trying to figure my way around it. I had to close it so that I could remain calm for the rest of the day.
Silicon vendors are the absolute worst. Everything requires an especially arduous signup complete with employer, product usage grid, and favorite color and the websites are impossible to navigate because they were designed entirely by the marketing people.
The cookie approval dialogue was quite snappy though. Better than most implementations I've seen. Didn't reload the page. Didn't display a large spinner once you made a choice.
"Holding ALT to scroll faster is cheating and not allowed."
This is interesting, since ALT + scrollwheel on Firefox is supposed to move forward and backward in your page history, but in the terms and conditions, it helps you scroll at normal speed.
Gave up at the user agreement, where you can't "accept" or dismiss until (presumably) you scroll to the bottom. The scrollbar is screwed up so that (1) wheeling is super slow and (2) you can't grab the elevator and drag it to the bottom of the shaft.
Upload profile picture area didn't appear correctly in Edge, had to switch to Chrome. Don't know if this is intentional but it's definitely accurate from my experiences, lol.
Reminds me of some old maths software we had to use in school which only ran in 'IE 6 or higher', but if you used IE 8 or above it would report the same 'use IE 6 or higher' message and not let you use the software. That software was also the only way to check whether your answers to the practise questions in the corresponding textbook were correct, which made revision pretty painful.
I had a similar idea to parody the irritating practices of some news sites, where they have five different headings/footers, some with auto-playing video (I'm looking at you independent.co.uk), others with cookie warnings which take 30s to close (AFAIK theverge does this), some that are static and don't move when you scroll, others that disappear in arbitrary random ways when you scroll and reappear when you move the page just a little bit.
I've seen websites that show so many that the news article is only visible through a tiny 10% sized crack. So frustrating.
[+] [-] cousin_it|6 years ago|reply
1) Require adblock
2) Banner saying the website doesn't use cookies, which goes away if you mouseover
3) If you're on mobile, show a banner saying the website doesn't have an app
4) A signup form, but when you try to focus it, it turns into a banner saying "jk this website doesn't have signup"
[+] [-] Fnoord|6 years ago|reply
1) Not complain about adblock (ie. silently allow it instead of moaning).
2) Simply don't use cookies.
3) Don't mention app (which is often just an Electron frontend anyway) in any way.
4) Allow the website to be used without signing up.
These 4 examples used to be the default back in the early days of the WWW.
[+] [-] kekebo|6 years ago|reply
otherwise:
5) works better with Javascript disabled
6) works better in Firefox than Chrome
7) doesn't work if it can read your referer
[+] [-] avip|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yoz-y|6 years ago|reply
I sign up only once, yet every website makes it hard to find the login dialog which I use way more often.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pvg|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Freak_NL|6 years ago|reply
Not really a problem if you're just entering garbage information, but try to find the proper flag if you actually want the correct one. Bonus points if you are one of the many lucky citizens born under a flag that consists of three horizontal or vertical areas of equal size.
[+] [-] wazoox|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joegahona|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dredmorbius|6 years ago|reply
https://www.britannica.com/list/flags-that-look-alike
https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/xf-like.html
[+] [-] jmiserez|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elliotpage|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baq|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ourmandave|6 years ago|reply
I also appreciate how it would reappear and block the interface.
But kind of disappointed it didn't instantly reappear if you moused over it. Or that it didn't randomly bounce for attention in my peripheral vision.
And to the person out there thinking of making a front end framework based on this, just don't do it man!
But if you do, I suppose you could call it BootAss or HateStrap.
[+] [-] hermitdev|6 years ago|reply
Who the fuck is implementing these things and how do they justify this shit as contributing to the user experience? I came to your aite to read an article, not to be bombarded with ridiculously distracting prompts, banners and subscribe prompts - and this completely ignoring the intrusiveness of the ads with autoplaying video and audio.
Shit like this really makes me rethink visiting sites like Wired, though they are by far not the only ones doing this, just the one that happened to me today.
Why do web devs think this a good thing to do? Pull this crap in a desktop, sure as he'll would uninstall.
/rant
[+] [-] DonHopkins|6 years ago|reply
Intro to PeopleAggregator (turn your volume down first)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYTEf4amE74
Gnomedex 6.0: Marc Canter on People Aggregator (in which Marc explains why he doesn't have blue balls)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Mesx1oRdo
https://techcrunch.com/2006/06/27/a-look-inside-peopleaggreg...
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] chimprich|6 years ago|reply
https://www.asus.com/uk/
It's genius. It's got a little "online services" icon with a friendly smiley face with a microphone and headphones.
You click on it, expecting an interactive chat but what you actually get is a photo of someone smiling hugely with headphones on and a laptop open, and a sidebar where you can search their inadequate help documents.
I'm glad it's a parody or it would be really insulting.
[+] [-] phito|6 years ago|reply
I still don't get why people want chatbots as they're terrible UI, so frustrating to use even when they're made properly.
[+] [-] garaetjjte|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] argd678|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrfredward|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] penagwin|6 years ago|reply
It's like how elementary school kids write their "papers" in comic sans (and eight other fonts half-way through) and each word is a different color. Or they make a power point and every-single-dang-thing just HAS to spin into the slide.
[+] [-] therein|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elil17|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pgwhalen|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shultays|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tannhaeuser|6 years ago|reply
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/9pmqxb/typical_...
[+] [-] D_Alex|6 years ago|reply
Things I remember:
- Not being able to enter my correct date of birth. At all. So you enter an incorrect date to get to the next screen, which is "I certify all information to be true and correct"
- Having to list the personal details of every relative living in Russia. Where do you stop?
- Having to list the details of every foreign trip you made in the last 10 years
And if you try to phone in to ask for help: you are advised that the phone is answered on one day of the week, between 9 am and 12 noon. You get that message until 8:59, from 9:00 you get "all the lines are busy, you have been placed in a call queue" which changes back to the original at 12:00.
[+] [-] penagwin|6 years ago|reply
I hate you.
[+] [-] empoman|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] social_quotient|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sdegutis|6 years ago|reply
"Oh, it didn't mean whole email, just the first part"
"Hmm tab doesn't work"
"Oh, it didn't mean whole domain, just the first part"
"Where's .com, oh I see"
"Wait 'Next' isn't the big blue button?"
"Oh I see, that big red message means my password is good."
The 'How can we help' arrow just makes it grow slightly taller. Over and over. Heh heh heh.
And that was just the first page! This is fun, had me genuinely chuckling quite a lot.
[+] [-] ilikehurdles|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makapuf|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sul4bh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] option_greek|6 years ago|reply
https://www.st.com/en/development-tools/stvd-stm8.html
[+] [-] AWildC182|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sgt|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nimchimpsky|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] fredsted|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wickerman|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] worldsayshi|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arayh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lpellis|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghettoimp|6 years ago|reply
Gave up at the user agreement, where you can't "accept" or dismiss until (presumably) you scroll to the bottom. The scrollbar is screwed up so that (1) wheeling is super slow and (2) you can't grab the elevator and drag it to the bottom of the shaft.
[+] [-] NJRBailey|6 years ago|reply
Reminds me of some old maths software we had to use in school which only ran in 'IE 6 or higher', but if you used IE 8 or above it would report the same 'use IE 6 or higher' message and not let you use the software. That software was also the only way to check whether your answers to the practise questions in the corresponding textbook were correct, which made revision pretty painful.
[+] [-] dom96|6 years ago|reply
I've seen websites that show so many that the news article is only visible through a tiny 10% sized crack. So frustrating.