I don’t actually mind at all, to be honest. For example, the other day I was on squarespace to find out what they were all about, what they cost, what their plans entailed. They use this layout. Pretty much everything I wanted to know was either on the page or easily accessible through the page. So no issue with me. (Adobe claiming it’s going to show you a changelog and then NOT linking you to a changelog - that’s something else entirely)
Frankly, I’m just ecstatic that this sort of layout actually involves white space and thus some web pages are allowing themselves some breathing room rather than stuffing everything possible into as small an amount of screen space available. I am tired of mountains of text and images crammed in “above the fold”.
Google also has shifted its weight, as mentioned, and severely impacts websites that don’t have what they determine a positive mobile experience. So that alters the tide no matter what any of us think.
I use tablets constantly. I’ve got 4 of them in use, just a gadget junkie I guess.
I use a browser (Firefox) that lets me ‘request the desktop version’ of sites by default.
Ugh, yes. I hate almost all of the web design trends in the last 5 years. Including some of the trends aimed at regular browsers, such as AJAX. It usually ends up being a bunch of “features” that amount to making the page more difficult and painful to use in their quest to make their web page more like a normal application. I started using a script blocker to limp an ancient laptop along when flash ads started coming 20 to a page, now I use it just to make some websites behave.
OTOH, I think that Spec’s search page is the pinnacle of web design, so consider the source.
Ugh; it would be hard to find a better (worse) example of this terrible trend than squarespace.
It required scrolling through thirteen pages (I counted) just to get to the end of the page, where they had the price information. Which is the first information that I wanted to know (Well, that’s slightly inaccurate. The first information I wanted to know was if they subscribed to the tabletization trend. Since they do, there’s no need for me to know the price.).
Tablets encourage this absurd design because they facilitate scrolling. PCs can easily scroll at a rate somewhat higher than you can consume information. But tablets can scroll much faster than that since you can swipe at high speeds. And so we see sites that require that form of navigation, even though it was really just a side effect of their design.
I’m not completely aesthetically blind; I appreciate good use of whitespace to delineate parts of a page. I also appreciate good typography. But I’m an adult and can handle more than two sentences on a page. I like technical manuals more than children’s books. I’m more comfortable in a Home Depot than an art gallery. I use the web for information and I want their design to not waste my time.
A decent web developer will create a “mobile ready” site that works across various platforms, be it mobile or not. But the script kiddies today are so enamoured with themselves, it’s all about them and social media. It’s mobile or nothing. All flash and no substance, in keeping with the mindset using those sites.
MSNBC, CNN and even the BBC have succumbed to the mobile only design, among others. For many of them it makes good business sense since their content was dumbed down a few years ago anyway.
I think a hierarchy where you just have a few choices, then those choices open up several more choices, then those choices open up several more is much better than cramming 200 different tiny options onto a single page. Far faster for humans to parse.
The desktop answer to tablet scrolling is the middle mouse button and a really big monitor. Try it sometime - I was able to scroll through the sites linked here in a few seconds. Also helps to use a computer capable of scrolling smoothly and a fast browser like google chrome.
I like it too. You old fogeys need to get with the times. No one’s on your lawn!
There’s a lot of “blame Apple” and “blame Google” going on here, but I think the thing you’re actually hating on is the Bootstrap framework, developed by Twitter.
On the consumer side, it’s largely fogeys I blame for this crap. Tablets made it so literally everyone’s grandma is now on the internet. But grandma’s eyesight ain’t so hot, so now every site uses 18 point type. And not too many options, since grandma gets confused when there are more than three items on a page. And the site better look like a magazine, since that’s all that grandma really wants out of her tablet in the first place.
