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  3. I hate Big Blanks and I cannot lie...

I hate Big Blanks and I cannot lie...

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  • F Forogar

    Why do so-called designers think that large areas of blank, white space is a good thing? Is this a plot by huge, High Definition screen vendors to drive sales? In the good old days the key thing about displaying information on a screen was to provide such information in a compact, readable form with interface fields glaringly obvious (such as text entry,buttons, etc.). Now it's all about using invisible scrollbars (once you guess where they are and hover over that area long enough) to plough through huge acreages of blank space just to read more than a couple of lines at a time. In addition, the text is squeezed between huge stock photos that are barely relevant and jump, scroll or wobble around the screen like that old April Fool's code that made dialog box buttons dodge your mouse when you tried to click on them. ..and half the time buttons are just some text you have to know to click upon. Example: The other day I went to UPS/FedEx/whoever to track a parcel. There was some huge text somewhere in the middle of a large blank area that said "Tracking #" (note the "#" instead of "number", despite the huge surround white space available). So I tried typing the tracking number - didn't work, I needed to click on the entry field to get focus. Where is the entry field? I clicked on the text, nothing happened; I clicked on the blank area immediately to the right of the text, nothing happened; I clicked on the blank area immediately below the text, nothing happened... hmmm. I clicked randomly in various places around the screen and then tried typing, nothing... ...until finally I found that if I clicked below the text about an inch (or a couple of centimeters) below the text and started typing, the number finally appeared! Yay! There was no flashing cursor, no text entry border or shadowed area, no different shade of grey or colour to give a clue where to type; you just had to click randomly until you found the area that responded. Hovering around to see the cursor change to a text entry cursor didn't work anymore - there was no cursor at all during text entry, the mouse pointer didn't change or even move to follow the entered text. What numpty thought that was a good user interface (sorry, User eXperience)? I'm surprised I didn't have to scroll down to find it! Actually, I would have had to if I was on a smaller screen or not running full-screen. To sum up: Grrrrr! Thoughts?

    - I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me th

    L Offline
    L Offline
    Lost User
    wrote on last edited by
    #5

    Did you get the "how was your experience today?" email from them?

    1 Reply Last reply
    0
    • F Forogar

      Why do so-called designers think that large areas of blank, white space is a good thing? Is this a plot by huge, High Definition screen vendors to drive sales? In the good old days the key thing about displaying information on a screen was to provide such information in a compact, readable form with interface fields glaringly obvious (such as text entry,buttons, etc.). Now it's all about using invisible scrollbars (once you guess where they are and hover over that area long enough) to plough through huge acreages of blank space just to read more than a couple of lines at a time. In addition, the text is squeezed between huge stock photos that are barely relevant and jump, scroll or wobble around the screen like that old April Fool's code that made dialog box buttons dodge your mouse when you tried to click on them. ..and half the time buttons are just some text you have to know to click upon. Example: The other day I went to UPS/FedEx/whoever to track a parcel. There was some huge text somewhere in the middle of a large blank area that said "Tracking #" (note the "#" instead of "number", despite the huge surround white space available). So I tried typing the tracking number - didn't work, I needed to click on the entry field to get focus. Where is the entry field? I clicked on the text, nothing happened; I clicked on the blank area immediately to the right of the text, nothing happened; I clicked on the blank area immediately below the text, nothing happened... hmmm. I clicked randomly in various places around the screen and then tried typing, nothing... ...until finally I found that if I clicked below the text about an inch (or a couple of centimeters) below the text and started typing, the number finally appeared! Yay! There was no flashing cursor, no text entry border or shadowed area, no different shade of grey or colour to give a clue where to type; you just had to click randomly until you found the area that responded. Hovering around to see the cursor change to a text entry cursor didn't work anymore - there was no cursor at all during text entry, the mouse pointer didn't change or even move to follow the entered text. What numpty thought that was a good user interface (sorry, User eXperience)? I'm surprised I didn't have to scroll down to find it! Actually, I would have had to if I was on a smaller screen or not running full-screen. To sum up: Grrrrr! Thoughts?

      - I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me th

      P Offline
      P Offline
      PIEBALDconsult
      wrote on last edited by
      #6

      I agree. Would a black background be better? (I don't think so.)

      1 Reply Last reply
      0
      • F Forogar

        Why do so-called designers think that large areas of blank, white space is a good thing? Is this a plot by huge, High Definition screen vendors to drive sales? In the good old days the key thing about displaying information on a screen was to provide such information in a compact, readable form with interface fields glaringly obvious (such as text entry,buttons, etc.). Now it's all about using invisible scrollbars (once you guess where they are and hover over that area long enough) to plough through huge acreages of blank space just to read more than a couple of lines at a time. In addition, the text is squeezed between huge stock photos that are barely relevant and jump, scroll or wobble around the screen like that old April Fool's code that made dialog box buttons dodge your mouse when you tried to click on them. ..and half the time buttons are just some text you have to know to click upon. Example: The other day I went to UPS/FedEx/whoever to track a parcel. There was some huge text somewhere in the middle of a large blank area that said "Tracking #" (note the "#" instead of "number", despite the huge surround white space available). So I tried typing the tracking number - didn't work, I needed to click on the entry field to get focus. Where is the entry field? I clicked on the text, nothing happened; I clicked on the blank area immediately to the right of the text, nothing happened; I clicked on the blank area immediately below the text, nothing happened... hmmm. I clicked randomly in various places around the screen and then tried typing, nothing... ...until finally I found that if I clicked below the text about an inch (or a couple of centimeters) below the text and started typing, the number finally appeared! Yay! There was no flashing cursor, no text entry border or shadowed area, no different shade of grey or colour to give a clue where to type; you just had to click randomly until you found the area that responded. Hovering around to see the cursor change to a text entry cursor didn't work anymore - there was no cursor at all during text entry, the mouse pointer didn't change or even move to follow the entered text. What numpty thought that was a good user interface (sorry, User eXperience)? I'm surprised I didn't have to scroll down to find it! Actually, I would have had to if I was on a smaller screen or not running full-screen. To sum up: Grrrrr! Thoughts?

        - I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me th

        D Offline
        D Offline
        dandy72
        wrote on last edited by
        #7

        But-but-but it's all about making pages look cleeeeeean, and scrollbars and control edges make everything look too busy. Whatever. But as far as I'm concerned, a web page and a pamphlet serve different purposes. Don't turn one into the other.

        M 1 Reply Last reply
        0
        • F Forogar

          Why do so-called designers think that large areas of blank, white space is a good thing? Is this a plot by huge, High Definition screen vendors to drive sales? In the good old days the key thing about displaying information on a screen was to provide such information in a compact, readable form with interface fields glaringly obvious (such as text entry,buttons, etc.). Now it's all about using invisible scrollbars (once you guess where they are and hover over that area long enough) to plough through huge acreages of blank space just to read more than a couple of lines at a time. In addition, the text is squeezed between huge stock photos that are barely relevant and jump, scroll or wobble around the screen like that old April Fool's code that made dialog box buttons dodge your mouse when you tried to click on them. ..and half the time buttons are just some text you have to know to click upon. Example: The other day I went to UPS/FedEx/whoever to track a parcel. There was some huge text somewhere in the middle of a large blank area that said "Tracking #" (note the "#" instead of "number", despite the huge surround white space available). So I tried typing the tracking number - didn't work, I needed to click on the entry field to get focus. Where is the entry field? I clicked on the text, nothing happened; I clicked on the blank area immediately to the right of the text, nothing happened; I clicked on the blank area immediately below the text, nothing happened... hmmm. I clicked randomly in various places around the screen and then tried typing, nothing... ...until finally I found that if I clicked below the text about an inch (or a couple of centimeters) below the text and started typing, the number finally appeared! Yay! There was no flashing cursor, no text entry border or shadowed area, no different shade of grey or colour to give a clue where to type; you just had to click randomly until you found the area that responded. Hovering around to see the cursor change to a text entry cursor didn't work anymore - there was no cursor at all during text entry, the mouse pointer didn't change or even move to follow the entered text. What numpty thought that was a good user interface (sorry, User eXperience)? I'm surprised I didn't have to scroll down to find it! Actually, I would have had to if I was on a smaller screen or not running full-screen. To sum up: Grrrrr! Thoughts?

          - I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me th

          M Offline
          M Offline
          Marc Clifton
          wrote on last edited by
          #8

          When I see sites like that I like to inspect the code and more often than not I discover something that leads me to believe (with a high degree of confidence) that the site was written in Ruby on Rails. Or maybe Django. Not that I haven't seen horrid sites written in Microsoft tech, one only needs to look at Microsoft's own site and Office365 online. It's a free-for-all out there, and the web development community is in free-fall. :laugh:

          Latest Articles:
          Abusing Extension Methods, Null Continuation, and Null Coalescence Operators

          N D M 3 Replies Last reply
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          • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

            Yeah, and they use Stock Photos of Their Jobs[^] :doh:

            "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

            T Offline
            T Offline
            theoldfool
            wrote on last edited by
            #9

            :thumbsup:

            If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.

            1 Reply Last reply
            0
            • F Forogar

              Why do so-called designers think that large areas of blank, white space is a good thing? Is this a plot by huge, High Definition screen vendors to drive sales? In the good old days the key thing about displaying information on a screen was to provide such information in a compact, readable form with interface fields glaringly obvious (such as text entry,buttons, etc.). Now it's all about using invisible scrollbars (once you guess where they are and hover over that area long enough) to plough through huge acreages of blank space just to read more than a couple of lines at a time. In addition, the text is squeezed between huge stock photos that are barely relevant and jump, scroll or wobble around the screen like that old April Fool's code that made dialog box buttons dodge your mouse when you tried to click on them. ..and half the time buttons are just some text you have to know to click upon. Example: The other day I went to UPS/FedEx/whoever to track a parcel. There was some huge text somewhere in the middle of a large blank area that said "Tracking #" (note the "#" instead of "number", despite the huge surround white space available). So I tried typing the tracking number - didn't work, I needed to click on the entry field to get focus. Where is the entry field? I clicked on the text, nothing happened; I clicked on the blank area immediately to the right of the text, nothing happened; I clicked on the blank area immediately below the text, nothing happened... hmmm. I clicked randomly in various places around the screen and then tried typing, nothing... ...until finally I found that if I clicked below the text about an inch (or a couple of centimeters) below the text and started typing, the number finally appeared! Yay! There was no flashing cursor, no text entry border or shadowed area, no different shade of grey or colour to give a clue where to type; you just had to click randomly until you found the area that responded. Hovering around to see the cursor change to a text entry cursor didn't work anymore - there was no cursor at all during text entry, the mouse pointer didn't change or even move to follow the entered text. What numpty thought that was a good user interface (sorry, User eXperience)? I'm surprised I didn't have to scroll down to find it! Actually, I would have had to if I was on a smaller screen or not running full-screen. To sum up: Grrrrr! Thoughts?

              - I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me th

              L Offline
              L Offline
              Lost User
              wrote on last edited by
              #10

              Unused space is a waste of screen real-estate. I've been given a machine with a heavy graphics card, and at a high resolution half of my screen is often empty on most webpages. Most games use the space more wisely. Also, I am a big fan of WinForms, and as someone already noticed, it scales horribly :thumbsup:

              Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^] "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.

              D 1 Reply Last reply
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              • M Mark_Wallace

                Forogar wrote:

                There was no flashing cursor, no text entry border or shadowed area, no different shade of grey or colour to give a clue where to type; you just had to click randomly until you found the area that responded

                I know it's not a solution to the moronically bad design you rightly complain about, but most pre-made "You. too can build a website for your company, with no training!" templates do automatically assign tab-order values, so you might be able to click on the field label and hit the Tab key, to position the cursor.

                I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

                F Offline
                F Offline
                Forogar
                wrote on last edited by
                #11

                That's an idea I didn't try but would probably have worked. However, you and I are developers and know these things. Most of the customers are not and would not know this so, once more, a useless UX!

                - I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.

                M 1 Reply Last reply
                0
                • F Forogar

                  Why do so-called designers think that large areas of blank, white space is a good thing? Is this a plot by huge, High Definition screen vendors to drive sales? In the good old days the key thing about displaying information on a screen was to provide such information in a compact, readable form with interface fields glaringly obvious (such as text entry,buttons, etc.). Now it's all about using invisible scrollbars (once you guess where they are and hover over that area long enough) to plough through huge acreages of blank space just to read more than a couple of lines at a time. In addition, the text is squeezed between huge stock photos that are barely relevant and jump, scroll or wobble around the screen like that old April Fool's code that made dialog box buttons dodge your mouse when you tried to click on them. ..and half the time buttons are just some text you have to know to click upon. Example: The other day I went to UPS/FedEx/whoever to track a parcel. There was some huge text somewhere in the middle of a large blank area that said "Tracking #" (note the "#" instead of "number", despite the huge surround white space available). So I tried typing the tracking number - didn't work, I needed to click on the entry field to get focus. Where is the entry field? I clicked on the text, nothing happened; I clicked on the blank area immediately to the right of the text, nothing happened; I clicked on the blank area immediately below the text, nothing happened... hmmm. I clicked randomly in various places around the screen and then tried typing, nothing... ...until finally I found that if I clicked below the text about an inch (or a couple of centimeters) below the text and started typing, the number finally appeared! Yay! There was no flashing cursor, no text entry border or shadowed area, no different shade of grey or colour to give a clue where to type; you just had to click randomly until you found the area that responded. Hovering around to see the cursor change to a text entry cursor didn't work anymore - there was no cursor at all during text entry, the mouse pointer didn't change or even move to follow the entered text. What numpty thought that was a good user interface (sorry, User eXperience)? I'm surprised I didn't have to scroll down to find it! Actually, I would have had to if I was on a smaller screen or not running full-screen. To sum up: Grrrrr! Thoughts?

                  - I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me th

                  K Offline
                  K Offline
                  kmoorevs
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #12

                  I complained about this last week. One of our company websites is being redesigned using WordPress...the theme is huge graphics, animations, super large titles and lot's of wasted space. :sigh: Unfortunately, I'll be the one charged with maintaining it. :sigh: I do web applications, not websites! :)

                  "Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse

                  1 Reply Last reply
                  0
                  • M Marc Clifton

                    When I see sites like that I like to inspect the code and more often than not I discover something that leads me to believe (with a high degree of confidence) that the site was written in Ruby on Rails. Or maybe Django. Not that I haven't seen horrid sites written in Microsoft tech, one only needs to look at Microsoft's own site and Office365 online. It's a free-for-all out there, and the web development community is in free-fall. :laugh:

                    Latest Articles:
                    Abusing Extension Methods, Null Continuation, and Null Coalescence Operators

                    N Offline
                    N Offline
                    Nelek
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #13

                    Option 1:

                    Marc Clifton wrote:

                    and the web development community is in free-fall.

                    without parachutes Option 2:

                    Marc Clifton wrote:

                    and the web development community is in free-fallfail.

                    FTFY Choose one :rolleyes: :laugh:

                    M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.

                    1 Reply Last reply
                    0
                    • M Marc Clifton

                      When I see sites like that I like to inspect the code and more often than not I discover something that leads me to believe (with a high degree of confidence) that the site was written in Ruby on Rails. Or maybe Django. Not that I haven't seen horrid sites written in Microsoft tech, one only needs to look at Microsoft's own site and Office365 online. It's a free-for-all out there, and the web development community is in free-fall. :laugh:

                      Latest Articles:
                      Abusing Extension Methods, Null Continuation, and Null Coalescence Operators

                      D Offline
                      D Offline
                      dandy72
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #14

                      Marc Clifton wrote:

                      It's a free-for-all out there, and the web development community is in free-fall

                      Years ago I was basically being moved away from a traditional desktop client/server app developer role into a web dev role. Then a few months ago I told my boss I had to go back to something I'm more familiar with because--I told him bluntly--as a software developer, that's not what I had signed up for. Portfolio diversity be damned. It had come to a point where I dreaded getting up in the morning. It's not that I couldn't hack it, I just hated every aspect of it. If I can make it to retirement without ever having to do web development...I'll be happy. If I can't - I honestly would consider an early retirement. I just can't find the motivation for that crap.

                      M 1 Reply Last reply
                      0
                      • L Lost User

                        Unused space is a waste of screen real-estate. I've been given a machine with a heavy graphics card, and at a high resolution half of my screen is often empty on most webpages. Most games use the space more wisely. Also, I am a big fan of WinForms, and as someone already noticed, it scales horribly :thumbsup:

                        Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^] "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.

                        D Offline
                        D Offline
                        dandy72
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #15

                        Eddy Vluggen wrote:

                        at a high resolution half of my screen is often empty on most webpages.

                        And here I thought fluent design (isn't that what it's called?) was supposed to solve that. Web developers *must* be made to test against everything between 800x600, and all the way to 4K IMO. Native, not rescaled.

                        L 1 Reply Last reply
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                        • D dandy72

                          Eddy Vluggen wrote:

                          at a high resolution half of my screen is often empty on most webpages.

                          And here I thought fluent design (isn't that what it's called?) was supposed to solve that. Web developers *must* be made to test against everything between 800x600, and all the way to 4K IMO. Native, not rescaled.

                          L Offline
                          L Offline
                          Lost User
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #16

                          Going to cost too much, simple as that.

                          Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^] "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.

                          D 1 Reply Last reply
                          0
                          • F Forogar

                            Why do so-called designers think that large areas of blank, white space is a good thing? Is this a plot by huge, High Definition screen vendors to drive sales? In the good old days the key thing about displaying information on a screen was to provide such information in a compact, readable form with interface fields glaringly obvious (such as text entry,buttons, etc.). Now it's all about using invisible scrollbars (once you guess where they are and hover over that area long enough) to plough through huge acreages of blank space just to read more than a couple of lines at a time. In addition, the text is squeezed between huge stock photos that are barely relevant and jump, scroll or wobble around the screen like that old April Fool's code that made dialog box buttons dodge your mouse when you tried to click on them. ..and half the time buttons are just some text you have to know to click upon. Example: The other day I went to UPS/FedEx/whoever to track a parcel. There was some huge text somewhere in the middle of a large blank area that said "Tracking #" (note the "#" instead of "number", despite the huge surround white space available). So I tried typing the tracking number - didn't work, I needed to click on the entry field to get focus. Where is the entry field? I clicked on the text, nothing happened; I clicked on the blank area immediately to the right of the text, nothing happened; I clicked on the blank area immediately below the text, nothing happened... hmmm. I clicked randomly in various places around the screen and then tried typing, nothing... ...until finally I found that if I clicked below the text about an inch (or a couple of centimeters) below the text and started typing, the number finally appeared! Yay! There was no flashing cursor, no text entry border or shadowed area, no different shade of grey or colour to give a clue where to type; you just had to click randomly until you found the area that responded. Hovering around to see the cursor change to a text entry cursor didn't work anymore - there was no cursor at all during text entry, the mouse pointer didn't change or even move to follow the entered text. What numpty thought that was a good user interface (sorry, User eXperience)? I'm surprised I didn't have to scroll down to find it! Actually, I would have had to if I was on a smaller screen or not running full-screen. To sum up: Grrrrr! Thoughts?

                            - I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me th

                            L Offline
                            L Offline
                            Lost User
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #17

                            Reminded me of "big pants and I cannot lie[^]". My fault, or did you aim for it?

                            Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^] "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.

                            1 Reply Last reply
                            0
                            • D dandy72

                              Marc Clifton wrote:

                              It's a free-for-all out there, and the web development community is in free-fall

                              Years ago I was basically being moved away from a traditional desktop client/server app developer role into a web dev role. Then a few months ago I told my boss I had to go back to something I'm more familiar with because--I told him bluntly--as a software developer, that's not what I had signed up for. Portfolio diversity be damned. It had come to a point where I dreaded getting up in the morning. It's not that I couldn't hack it, I just hated every aspect of it. If I can make it to retirement without ever having to do web development...I'll be happy. If I can't - I honestly would consider an early retirement. I just can't find the motivation for that crap.

                              M Offline
                              M Offline
                              Mycroft Holmes
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #18

                              dandy72 wrote:

                              If I can make it to retirement without ever having to do web development

                              I made it, just. Now looking at fiddling around with web design in my copious spare time, haven't touched any code in months.

                              Never underestimate the power of human stupidity - RAH I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP

                              D 1 Reply Last reply
                              0
                              • F Forogar

                                Why do so-called designers think that large areas of blank, white space is a good thing? Is this a plot by huge, High Definition screen vendors to drive sales? In the good old days the key thing about displaying information on a screen was to provide such information in a compact, readable form with interface fields glaringly obvious (such as text entry,buttons, etc.). Now it's all about using invisible scrollbars (once you guess where they are and hover over that area long enough) to plough through huge acreages of blank space just to read more than a couple of lines at a time. In addition, the text is squeezed between huge stock photos that are barely relevant and jump, scroll or wobble around the screen like that old April Fool's code that made dialog box buttons dodge your mouse when you tried to click on them. ..and half the time buttons are just some text you have to know to click upon. Example: The other day I went to UPS/FedEx/whoever to track a parcel. There was some huge text somewhere in the middle of a large blank area that said "Tracking #" (note the "#" instead of "number", despite the huge surround white space available). So I tried typing the tracking number - didn't work, I needed to click on the entry field to get focus. Where is the entry field? I clicked on the text, nothing happened; I clicked on the blank area immediately to the right of the text, nothing happened; I clicked on the blank area immediately below the text, nothing happened... hmmm. I clicked randomly in various places around the screen and then tried typing, nothing... ...until finally I found that if I clicked below the text about an inch (or a couple of centimeters) below the text and started typing, the number finally appeared! Yay! There was no flashing cursor, no text entry border or shadowed area, no different shade of grey or colour to give a clue where to type; you just had to click randomly until you found the area that responded. Hovering around to see the cursor change to a text entry cursor didn't work anymore - there was no cursor at all during text entry, the mouse pointer didn't change or even move to follow the entered text. What numpty thought that was a good user interface (sorry, User eXperience)? I'm surprised I didn't have to scroll down to find it! Actually, I would have had to if I was on a smaller screen or not running full-screen. To sum up: Grrrrr! Thoughts?

                                - I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me th

                                M Offline
                                M Offline
                                Mycroft Holmes
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #19

                                You missed the point, tracking an item should be a challenge as they are not really interested in you finding it so - crappy web design gets blamed for deliberately obscure edit controls. :laugh:

                                Never underestimate the power of human stupidity - RAH I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP

                                1 Reply Last reply
                                0
                                • F Forogar

                                  That's an idea I didn't try but would probably have worked. However, you and I are developers and know these things. Most of the customers are not and would not know this so, once more, a useless UX!

                                  - I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.

                                  M Offline
                                  M Offline
                                  Mark_Wallace
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #20

                                  Well, they've got plenty of space on the page to explain how to do it.

                                  I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

                                  1 Reply Last reply
                                  0
                                  • D dandy72

                                    But-but-but it's all about making pages look cleeeeeean, and scrollbars and control edges make everything look too busy. Whatever. But as far as I'm concerned, a web page and a pamphlet serve different purposes. Don't turn one into the other.

                                    M Offline
                                    M Offline
                                    Mark_Wallace
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #21

                                    dandy72 wrote:

                                    scrollbars and control edges make everything look too busy

                                    ms says that the scrollbars vanish to allow people to focus on their work (the morons actually use the word "focus"). Everyone else in the world says that they can't focus on their work because the f***ing scrollbars keep vanishing.

                                    I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

                                    D D 2 Replies Last reply
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                                    • M Marc Clifton

                                      When I see sites like that I like to inspect the code and more often than not I discover something that leads me to believe (with a high degree of confidence) that the site was written in Ruby on Rails. Or maybe Django. Not that I haven't seen horrid sites written in Microsoft tech, one only needs to look at Microsoft's own site and Office365 online. It's a free-for-all out there, and the web development community is in free-fall. :laugh:

                                      Latest Articles:
                                      Abusing Extension Methods, Null Continuation, and Null Coalescence Operators

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                                      Mark_Wallace
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #22

                                      I'm all in favour of ham-fisted, messy, badly-designed pages for people's personal sites (if a guy wants to have his say about something or just be a part of the Internet, he shouldn't have to study for three years to do so), but the slightest sign of unprofessionalism in site design for a company makes me not want to risk doing business with that company. For me, not being willing or able to do a job well means not being willing or able to do a job well.

                                      I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

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                                      • M Mark_Wallace

                                        dandy72 wrote:

                                        scrollbars and control edges make everything look too busy

                                        ms says that the scrollbars vanish to allow people to focus on their work (the morons actually use the word "focus"). Everyone else in the world says that they can't focus on their work because the f***ing scrollbars keep vanishing.

                                        I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

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                                        DJ van Wyk
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #23

                                        There is nothing like "let's just quickly do something before starting the next big task" and then half an hour later be so annoyed with what was supposed to be a simple task on a simple web page that you can't even concentrate on your actual work anymore.

                                        My plan is to live forever ... so far so good

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                                        • F Forogar

                                          Why do so-called designers think that large areas of blank, white space is a good thing? Is this a plot by huge, High Definition screen vendors to drive sales? In the good old days the key thing about displaying information on a screen was to provide such information in a compact, readable form with interface fields glaringly obvious (such as text entry,buttons, etc.). Now it's all about using invisible scrollbars (once you guess where they are and hover over that area long enough) to plough through huge acreages of blank space just to read more than a couple of lines at a time. In addition, the text is squeezed between huge stock photos that are barely relevant and jump, scroll or wobble around the screen like that old April Fool's code that made dialog box buttons dodge your mouse when you tried to click on them. ..and half the time buttons are just some text you have to know to click upon. Example: The other day I went to UPS/FedEx/whoever to track a parcel. There was some huge text somewhere in the middle of a large blank area that said "Tracking #" (note the "#" instead of "number", despite the huge surround white space available). So I tried typing the tracking number - didn't work, I needed to click on the entry field to get focus. Where is the entry field? I clicked on the text, nothing happened; I clicked on the blank area immediately to the right of the text, nothing happened; I clicked on the blank area immediately below the text, nothing happened... hmmm. I clicked randomly in various places around the screen and then tried typing, nothing... ...until finally I found that if I clicked below the text about an inch (or a couple of centimeters) below the text and started typing, the number finally appeared! Yay! There was no flashing cursor, no text entry border or shadowed area, no different shade of grey or colour to give a clue where to type; you just had to click randomly until you found the area that responded. Hovering around to see the cursor change to a text entry cursor didn't work anymore - there was no cursor at all during text entry, the mouse pointer didn't change or even move to follow the entered text. What numpty thought that was a good user interface (sorry, User eXperience)? I'm surprised I didn't have to scroll down to find it! Actually, I would have had to if I was on a smaller screen or not running full-screen. To sum up: Grrrrr! Thoughts?

                                          - I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me th

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                                          JohaViss61
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #24

                                          What I do in such case. I select everything on the page. (Ctrl-A) Usually that shows all items on the screen, visible or not.:cool:

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