Not related to the OP, but still a design WTF. Some update to IpadOS in the last 6 months or so changed the print dialog so you can only select a contiguous range of pages. Want to print 3-6, no problem. Want to print 2 and 4, sorry Apple has decided you can’t do that.
Sure, I could print 2, and then print 4, but then they’re on different pieces of paper, instead of on opposite sides of the same piece of paper. Wasting a piece of paper isn’t the worst thing in the grand scheme, but it was working perfectly fine before, and now it is less functional.
Knowing Apple design, there is probably an invisible button that needs to be pressed to make it work the way I want.
I’ve domain-blocked Facebook from my browsers, so that still wouldn’t work. If they can’t be bothered to put their information on a normal web page, they aren’t getting my business.
How about webpages that people visit in order to immediately search for something? When the page first loads, the cursor should land in the search bar. Google gets that, but Amazon and Wikipedia don’t seem to know about it. I almost never visit either for any reason except to search right off the bat, but it’s one extra hunt-and-click before I can type my search. Maybe others go to those sites primarily to browse, I don’t know.
Wikipedia, at least, used to be exactly 4 tab-keys away from the search box. Then they broke that.
I don’t think that Google relies on businesses contacting them for that. Remember, Google sees all, Google knows all. I think they figure out businesses’ hours based on when people go there (and they can tell the difference between employees and customers).
That’s still on web designers, though. Wix or whatever is in the business of webpages, and so their templates are made by real, professional web designers. If the templates suck, that’s their fault.
Right you are, thanks. I’ve been typing “en” to go to Wikipedia since time out of mind, forgot there even was a main page. And shift-alt-F works on the English language sub-wiki as you said.
I agree with your main point, though. It’s enraging that Amazon and others don’t have the cursor already there. Lots of applications get this wrong, too. If there’s any kind of search box or command box or whatever and nothing else has focus, give the box focus.
Well, to be fair we tried to hire web professionals but they all wanted like $1k+ a month for a SaaS solution and advertising portfolios. Whereas we just wanted something with our hours, phone number, address, and a link to a pdf form we already made up. Which seems to me a < $100 design since I could produce a paper copy in 5 minutes. After multiple sales pitches wasting multiple hundreds of dollars worth of bossman’s time, bossman just said screw it, Google Sites for $5 a month and promptly forgot the admin password.
Those pop-up windows that appear on the homepage of a website annoy me. No, I don’t want to give you my email address so you can send me your newsletter nor do I want to hear about your sale. I’ll go out of my way to interact with the pop-up window as little as possible. If reloading the page will cause it to go away, I’ll do that. If there is an obvious X to dismiss it, I’ll click on that.
I strongly suspect that, from their point of view, this is a feature not a bug. They want you to look at the other stuff they’re trying to sell you before you go off and find the thing you’re looking for.
If I can read around the thing enough to figure out whatever I came there looking for, I’ll ignore it entirely. And if I can’t, I may go somewhere else for the information.
Want to tell me you’ve got a newsletter or a sale? Nice little button, off to the side, not blinking at me or otherwise moving.
That I can live with, what bugs me (and I know this is only partially the fault of the designer) is when you click on the search bar just as something above it loads. Now instead of clicking on the search bar, you click on that. Hit the back button and be certain the bigger of a hurry you’re in, the more times in a row you’ll do it.
Another one that I just encountered today for the millionth time, is their “in stock” label being rather deceptive. Just today, for example, I new I would be passing a hardware store so I checked and they had something I needed. I run in and can’t find it. I grabbed my phone, searched for the part, clicked “Available to your store [address of my store]”, it’s showing the item is in stock. I clicked on it, hoping it would show me what aisle to look in only to see that it says “Not available at [my store], X in stock at [different store]”
That drives me up the wall. You can argue that I should have clicked through to the item to check that, but I’d argue that it shouldn’t have disappeared from the list when filtered for items only available at this store.
Home Depot does that as well. Get all the way to the store then realize that when I selected my store I neglected to open up a hidden submenu and unselect “and nearby stores”. Finding out that it’s available, but at the store 90 minutes away doesn’t much help me.
It’s about efficiency. If ninety percent of the people who are going to your webpage are looking for three simple pieces of information - hours of operation, phone number, street address - then you should put that information on the first page they encounter. Your home page should not be a link to the page your customers actually want to go to.
Amazon’s search engine is a horror. It’s apparently designed to lead you away from what you want to buy and towards what Amazon wants to sell you. It should be taught in classes as an example of the wrong way to build a search engine.
