A beef with website design

[davemchine]

My wife and I just returned from a week in San Diego. It was a really good week and we enjoyed our visit tremendously. We did have some frustration in planning each days activities though. Viewing major attractions websites it seems like visual stimulation is valued over actual information and we had to dig for the basic information such as address, hours of service, how long a visit might take, price of entrance, amount of walking involved etc.

It feels like basic information really should be front and center on a tourist attractions website. Anything else should be secondary. I'm sure web designers can charge more for flashy websites. They should rethink their approach.

[Markintosh]

:agree:

[lost in space]

Agreed. Too many designers seem to want to make websites that look "nice" rather than provide ease of use. A lot of content management systems have themes that lean that way. Too much blank space too, IMO. Makes me miss old sites, where a page might be packed with information instead of space, with lots of links on a page. McMaster Carr comes to mind. Industrial, to be sure, but effective, methinks.

I felt the same way about the new buildings at the university where I used to work, with the buildings saying, "look what our architects can do" instead of making them friendly for the users.

[davemchine]

Here is a contrast between a website a decade separated. The first has a site map and can be navigated easily. The second is flashing images that keep rotating (clearly not an old persons design) with tiny tiny text at the top leading to the important information. At least the info is there.

vs

[rich in distress]

miley-laughing001:

True that!

[gabester]

Maybe just like "robots.txt" and index.htm[l] being defaults for sites (to block automated content scanners and present the "main" homepage, someone ought to start propagating something like "textonly.txt" that has all the relevant text you'd want on a given site in a condensed text block.

Also, someone please stop giving designers ridiculous, large, high resolution screens that they present their content on in full screen... they ought to make sure everything looks and works well in 720p as a max minimum. 480p would be even better.

Also, test that content on screens/windows that are smaller than you'd expect - make sure key info is still easily visible and not oddly wrapped or obscured behind something else (I mean like 100x50 pixel windows etc.)

[JoeM]

I remember when web design and dev was actually fun. Considering the trends I see used for the majority of sites I have to visit these days, I'm so glad I'm retired from doing both.

[GGD]

gabester wrote:
Also, someone please stop giving designers ridiculous, large, high resolution screens that they present their content on in full screen... they ought to make sure everything looks and works well in 720p as a max minimum. 480p would be even better.

Also, test that content on screens/windows that are smaller than you'd expect - make sure key info is still easily visible and not oddly wrapped or obscured behind something else (I mean like 100x50 pixel windows etc.)

I've run into sites that are unusable with the 1280x800 screen on a 2012 13" MBP. Buttons you need to click are somewhere below the bottom of the visible part of the page and it's not scrollable. Sometimes zooming to 50% lets you see it, but maybe not be able to read it.

And then there are sites that seem to think Chrome is the only browser that exists, won't work on a recent version of FireFox but work just fine on an ancient version of Chrome.

[NewtonMP2100]

…..vegetarian…..