this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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I personally hate rounded corners and shadows added everywhere. Makes most things look crappy and smudged.

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[–] [email protected] 93 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Gonna trim my litany of complaints about modern trends down to my top 4 gripes:

  1. Websites that look like CVS receipts with their excessive left/right padding. Some L/R padding is desirable, but the degree to which it's done now is typically done to cram a bajillion ads in the margins.
  2. Excessive padding for UI controls. Looking at you, specifically, O365, but others are guilty as well. I use a desktop with a precision pointing device, so I don't need or want a UI designed to be poked at by hotdog fingers.
  3. Unhelpful error messages. "Oops, something went wrong". Ok, but it is it a "me" problem or a "you" problem? Should I do anything, take any specific action, retry, or just twiddle my thumbs and hope someone else fixes it?
  4. Chatbots that pop up on websites asking if you need help.

Bonus: Any time an email, website, or other online source has "click here" for a link. It's 2023. People know what a link is and what to do with it. All that "click here" says is you don't know what you're doing as a designer/publisher.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Websites that look like CVS receipts with their excessive left/right padding. Some L/R padding is desirable, but the degree to which it’s done now is typically done to cram a bajillion ads in the margins.

Yes, I deplore this. I don't see ads so I assume it's due to conform to mobile UIs that have a more vertical aspect rations like 9x16 so the designers don't have to bother actually designing their website. Fucking Wikipedia did this some time ago. Lemmy does it. I sit here on my desktop using 50% of the screen because web UX designers can't be arsed.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

so I assume it's due to conform to mobile UIs

Oh, yeah. I forgot about half-assed mobile support being one of the reasons for that. I do responsive design all day in my job, and it's really not hard. At all. So yeah, like you said, the UX designers just can't be arsed to do it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

If you view those sites without adblock you'll probably find it's filled with ads DailyMail I'm looking at you.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Present wisdom is to design something that would work well on mobile first so single column and then make it work on larger screens the easiest way being to keep everything the same except for replacing ☰ with the actual nav menu at a certain width and setting a max width that keeps it looking like stretched out crap.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The 'darkly-compact' theme here does widen the page for me

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The designers on my project actually designed such a non-telling unprofessional-tone "oops" error page.

Colleague implemented it like that, but on review we agreed it's just bad, and suggested/implemented an actually useful, professional error page.

It baffles me how people can implement actively useless stuff like that. And it even showed up in my team. I was somewhat surprised. I'm glad I'm Lead, and have direct communication with the customer. Two ways to prevent and improve things like that. At least in my projects.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

You're a good team lead, then. A lazier person would have just shipped the unhelpful error and called it a day.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

People know what a link is and what to do with it.

Do not underestimate the stupidity and/or computer illiteracy of some people.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I second this. There are lots of elements on a website that seem redundant or self explanatory today now that we've had 30 years of websites. But you simply can't assume this because everyone has a different amount of website navigation experience. Older people need everything to be labeled clearly and plainly and younger people are more familiar with app environments and might be inclined to look in unusual places for what they need. God forbid you take away the "home" link in the navigation "because everyone knows the logo links to the homepage anyway". No they do not. One of the best books on the subject is "Don't make me think" by Steve Krug and they have loads of excellent examples of why you can't just assume things like this.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Chatbots that pop up on websites asking if you need help

They're always like "Hi I'm a real person who will actually be able to address your query!"

... but then you ask them and it's always some uni student from bombay who's best attempt at helping you is to read the webpage you're looking at and then say... "Sure, if you can call 1800-whatever we will be able to assist you with that!"

[–] Theharpyeagle 2 points 1 year ago

Reddit is absolutely the worst for excessive padding. Here's your padded search page, let's open your thread in it with a padded modal! It's no wonder they can't load more than three nested comments before running out of horizontal space.