I hate Big Blanks and I cannot lie...
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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!
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.
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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
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
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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 OperatorsOption 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.
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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 OperatorsMarc 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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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
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.
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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.
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
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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
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
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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.
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!
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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.
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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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 OperatorsI'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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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!
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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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
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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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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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
Quote:
Why do so-called designers think that large areas of blank, white space is a good thing?
Of course, white space is a good thing. Walls of components and or text aren't inviting your users in. Reading on a monitor or tablet isn't the same as on paper. https://uxplanet.org/the-power-of-whitespace-a1a95e45f82b[^]
Quote:
In the good old days the key thing about displaying information on a screen was to provide such information in a compact, readable form
The reason we crammed everything on a screen in 'the good old days' was because of technical limitations, not because it was easy to use or inviting to use. Also, users usually had no alternatives, so how they felt in practice about it didn't matter. We have some of these applications at my current client. They are horrible. As for your example: I agree that that is bad UX. But it's not a good example of why whitespace is bad.
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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
I couldn't agree more. User interfaces especially those of UK high street banks are appalling but nowhere near as poor as the UK government web sites. These have been designed to guide you through a process that you find it hard to circumvent. It's almost like someone took a script / flowchart out of a book and tried to turn it into a web based menu driven system. When I access the site I want to see a log on and log out button somewhere near the top of the page, nope, all of this is hidden until they have determined what you "might need to do today". Then it's a matter of answering 4 or 5 questions with button clicks which take you from one page to the next. Almost as though someone thought, "hey we'd better keep the pages small but lets have loads of white space to make it look clean". Shoddy beyond belief.
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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
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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
I am new to Win 10 and I simply hate the design of the "Schedule my Updates for Later" dialog/application/panel. It would work well as a simple dialog with the nice time control and two buttons: "Schedule it", "Remind me later/Cancel". Instead they have a slider thingy and instructions on the page that you actually have to read to understand how to use what could have been a simple popup dialog. The old Microsoft used to be CUA compliant everywhere. Now they are trying to make Win10 look like a phone UI. Bring back CUA!