User Interface Irritations

Yes, I know: Most Web sites are intended to make money. Okay. But some now common Web site user interface (UI) practices have me leaving the site, in particular, resulting in the Web site producer (publisher) making from me $0.00 in money and, really, losing money, reputation, etc.

Here I hope to help both users and producers.

(1) Full Screen. It appears that in Web page design it is common to assume that the user is looking at the Web page with the page size at full screen.

Nope. Mostly I don't want one Web page covering all my screen -- for the relevant activity, I need to see more than one Web page on my one screen.

(2) Header Lines. Yes, a Web page designer wants to start with some lines of header material. So, there is such material from my Web browser, more from the Web site, and maybe more from some page at that site, and the result is maybe just 1-2 lines of text left for the relevant content. I no longer struggle with that situation and just close the Web browser instance.

(3) Growing Windows. Apparently it's possible for Web page code to grow the size of a window. Please don't do that. Instead do permit both horizontal and vertical scroll bars.

(4) Subtle Shades. It can be elegant to have subtle shades of screen content. Often that means, I can't read the content.

(5) There is now an old UI practice: Have UIs with obscure functions users are to discover by experience, even experiments. That practice must lower the use of the obscure functions.

(6) Old Controls. In the Web pages I wrote just using HTML and CSS, I noticed that I had some controls available -- single line text boxes, multi-line text boxes, check boxes, radio buttons, etc. So, that's what I used. But as I recall, some or all of these controls go all the way back decades As a result, no doubt now some billions of people understand these controls right away.

But now it's possible to alter these controls: So, can change the border of single line text boxes so that they don't show at all until a user happens to click in some hidden locations.

Or the text box can already have content, say, "Street Address". Sorry, I'd prefer the "Street Address" hint, title, instruction to be outside of the box.

Generally any change in the old controls reduces the number of users who understand a control from billions down to zero until, in the sense of (5), they do some experiments to learn the new controls.

I go to a lot of Web sites, and it is an irritation to have to learn for each site a unique variation on the old controls.

(7) Small Fonts. Yes, large fonts can look unsubtle. But small fonts can easily be too small to read and are an irritation.

Generally, just use relatively large fonts. And pick color combinations that are easy to read even if not elegant, subtle, or understated.

(8) Effects of Keys and Scrolling. Please do not change the function of the up/down arrow keys, the page up/down keys, or the mouse scroll wheel.

In particular, on some Web pages, if I scroll up, then suddenly I get a block of header material covering the top maybe 20% of the screen. That is a case of covering up content I'm trying to read and/or changing content I'm trying to read -- irritations.

Get a lesson from Google: Their Web page has mostly just a cartoon and a text box.

There are more cases of irritation: But there is, really, just one lesson here: Make the UI easy to use and not irritating.