I wish to understand what elements or aspects of the design of modern websites the end users are annoyed from. Though you are free to express your personal opinions, it would be even more insightful if you could provide objective criticism and suggestions for alternative implementations so that I may incorporate the same in my current and future projects to make them as user friendly as possible.

Some criticisms I have encountered a while back include:

  • Switches being basically checkboxes with more ambiguous active state
  • Scrolling animations that prohibit user from linearly scrolling through the page

Make sure that the opinion is not

  • Related to business/legal matters e.g. Cookie consent notices, ad banners etc.
  • Too vague e.g. Poor website layout
  • Highlighting objectively bad practices e.g. Lack of accessibility features

I recognise I could have followed a design system for this question, but I want to understand the situation from the perspective of the end users to see if they have a differing view on what a convenient user experience should be like.

  • PikaEnglish
    7·
    11 hours ago

    Browser incompatibilities.

    I use Firefox, Firefox is not a niche/unused browser. There is ZERO excuse for your web forms or pages to not work correctly because I’m using it. At the very least, all sites should be compatible with the latest form of Edge (gross), Chrome, Firefox and Safari. Those are considered Mainstream browsers. If your site fails to work on them properly, that’s one of the easiest ways to make me disappear off the site.

    Another big UI thing is infinite load pages. I don’t care about the next article in line, give the user a sidebar or bottom container that contains related content, then I as a user can decide to click it or not.

    And one last thing that many don’t take into consideration. Have a functional print layout of the page. So many sites don’t bother making a print layout but, as a user if I see something that I like, I might save it to a PDF, or print it out to show the family. When I do that I don’t need the headers(except maybe the title box?), banners, footers, splash screen, ad boxes, comments etc. I only really need the main body content. The print layout will show the URL if enabled, so I can always find my way back to the page without it. A lot of times if I am doing this, it’s because it’s significantly easier to show my family then having to somehow get them to visit the page.

    • jonathanvmv8f@lemm.eeOP
      3·
      10 hours ago

      The part about having proper print layout of the site is actually interesting to me. I just learned about it recently and was curious about how there was explicit CSS support for this. This introduces an entirely new perspective on how a website should be designed to offer reliable print support that I am willing to learn.

      • PikaEnglish
        3·
        8 hours ago

        Yea, not many sites bother but, the action makes it so much better, especially if the main content was supposed to be something that the user is supposed to digest such as a recipe or wiki site.

        The @media print css at-rule makes it super easy as well. just hide everything but what you want to show, and adjust the margins how you like it.