[Article]Web 2.0 'neglecting good design'

riddlermarc · 15 May 2007 at 08:52

Hype about Web 2.0 is making web firms neglect the basics of good design, web usability guru Jakob Nielsen has said.
He warned that the rush to make webpages more dynamic often meant users were badly served.

He said sites peppered with personalisation tools were in danger of resembling the "glossy but useless" sites at the height of the dotcom boom.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6653119.stm

Interesting and has more than an element of truth to it, designers these days can worry too much about design and neglect the usability - the article is definitely worth a read

Mr^B · 15 May 2007 at 15:59

riddlermarc said:
Interesting and has more than an element of truth to it, designers these days can worry too much about design and neglect the usability - the article is definitely worth a read

It uses the phrase "Web 2.0" and is therefore inherently worthless.

Beansprout · 15 May 2007 at 16:01

I see the above point and raise you:

riddlermarc said:
these days

It is doubly worthless because it contains this phrase

Dj_Jestar · 15 May 2007 at 16:02

Mr^B said:
It uses the phrase "Web 2.0" and is therefore inherently worthless.

No, it's still a very valid and applicable article. Just disregard the "Web 2.0" reference and replace with "Designers too obsessed with dynamic/asynchronous javascript requests."

Mr^B · 15 May 2007 at 16:12

Dj_Jestar said:
No, it's still a very valid and applicable article. Just disregard the "Web 2.0" reference and replace with "Designers too obsessed with dynamic/asynchronous javascript requests."

A badly designed website is a badly designed website - no matter what technology is employed. Websites haven't suddenly become badly designed due to AJAX/Flash - It's just another excuse to trot out an utterly meaningless buzz-word.

Someone at OCUK ought to put a reflection under the OCUK logo, put an AJAX updatepanel over the shopping basket on the right (so it doesn't do a postback when removing items from it), say it's "Web 2.0 Enabled" and then pimp it to the BBC as an example of the British Cottage Industry embracing the technological challenges of the 21st Century.

Dj_Jestar · 15 May 2007 at 16:45

Mr^B said:
A badly designed website is a badly designed website - no matter what technology is employed. Websites haven't suddenly become badly designed due to AJAX/Flash - It's just another excuse to trot out an utterly meaningless buzz-word.

Someone at OCUK ought to put a reflection under the OCUK logo, put an AJAX updatepanel over the shopping basket on the right (so it doesn't do a postback when removing items from it), say it's "Web 2.0 Enabled" and then pimp it to the BBC as an example of the British Cottage Industry embracing the technological challenges of the 21st Century.

Whilst in the mean time, nothing will be done to ensure that same functionality is available for those with JavaScript off/disabled, and the fussyness and annoyance of having a pop-up update panel powered by that fashinable buzz-word "AJAX", all because said designers are too caught and blinded by the "prettyness" that is not new 21st century technology, but has been available to us all for atleast 10years - only just recently have people taken a liking to it.

Proving the point of the article.

Mr^B · 15 May 2007 at 19:47

Dj_Jestar said:
Whilst in the mean time, nothing will be done to ensure that same functionality is available for those with JavaScript off/disabled, and the fussyness and annoyance of having a pop-up update panel powered by that fashinable buzz-word "AJAX", all because said designers are too caught and blinded by the "prettyness" that is not new 21st century technology, but has been available to us all for atleast 10years - only just recently have people taken a liking to it.

Proving the point of the article.

Does irony only happen to other people?

Where's a decent :whoosh: animated .gif when you need one?

Dj_Jestar · 15 May 2007 at 21:16

It was a continuation, not a reply

pinkaardvark · 16 May 2007 at 00:59

Being a predominantly desktop winforms developer I have been having a sniff at all things web recently including Ajax and other new technologies including the .NET 3.0 stuff.

So I first though woo Ajax this must be pretty cool stuff, only to find it was as exciting as a predictive dropdown for a search in google.. woo hoo! *yawn*

Sooner the Mac dies and we all go back to using properly designed desktop applications(have their backends connect to the web if you must) the world will be a better place.

Beansprout · 16 May 2007 at 01:08

pinkaardvark said:
Being a predominantly desktop winforms developer I have been having a sniff at all things web recently including Ajax and other new technologies including the .NET 3.0 stuff.

So I first though woo Ajax this must be pretty cool stuff, only to find it was as exciting as a predictive dropdown for a search in google.. woo hoo! *yawn*

Sooner the Mac dies and we all go back to using properly designed desktop applications(have their backends connect to the web if you must) the world will be a better place.

:/

Tried gMail?

pinkaardvark · 16 May 2007 at 01:44

Beansprout said:
:/

Tried gMail?

No.. is it bad

Ok I know my comment may seem flippant but htere is a kernel of reason in it.

Back in the 90's everyone built html sites
Then we saw MS come out with a load of cack such as DHTML and activeX on the web etc. Now there wasn't predominantly anything wrong with this just bandwidth at the time made it kinda pointless.
But bandwidth is growing exponentially now so why not go back to fully featured apps running in ie via ActiveX or similar and forget all the web 2.0 nonsense

alright so i'm out of touch with reality.. but I do find it funny some of the stuff that web developers get excited over.

Beansprout · 16 May 2007 at 02:26

pinkaardvark said:
No.. is it bad

It's brilliant

Your post is correct in that quite a bit of web apps are just badly impersonating desktop apps, but to say that everything should be desktop-based is just as bad as saying everything should be web based, in my opinion - "right tool for the right job"

Augmented · 16 May 2007 at 09:00

pinkaardvark said:
But bandwidth is growing exponentially now so why not go back to fully featured apps running in ie via ActiveX or similar and forget all the web 2.0 nonsense

See Adobe Apollo and Microsoft Silverlight.

Dj_Jestar · 16 May 2007 at 09:42

pinkaardvark said:
No.. is it bad

Ok I know my comment may seem flippant but htere is a kernel of reason in it.

Back in the 90's everyone built html sites
Then we saw MS come out with a load of cack such as DHTML and activeX on the web etc. Now there wasn't predominantly anything wrong with this just bandwidth at the time made it kinda pointless.
But bandwidth is growing exponentially now so why not go back to fully featured apps running in ie via ActiveX or similar and forget all the web 2.0 nonsense

alright so i'm out of touch with reality.. but I do find it funny some of the stuff that web developers get excited over.

ActiveX is a major component of "Web 2.0"

Also, ActiveX is a poor implementation of a good design.

pinkaardvark · 16 May 2007 at 15:27

Dj_Jestar said:
ActiveX is a major component of "Web 2.0"

Also, ActiveX is a poor implementation of a good design.

Really? I thought that was dead and buried. Then again i'm not sure what Web 2.0 is.

Stuff like Ajax, ASP 3.0 Silverlight and other WPF new tech is all new but does web 2.0 just mean more than old web lol.

Dj_Jestar · 16 May 2007 at 15:42

"Web 2.0" is a coined phrase by the media. It doesn't actually consist of anything; but some places will argue that XmlHttpRequest, ActiveX and just about anything that is asynchronous and/or more than "static" (loosely defined - i.e. you don't need to do a complete page refresh every post/get/etc) pages.

punky_munky · 16 May 2007 at 16:27

I think some people are getting confused between Web 2.0 and AJAX. The article is mainly referring to managing user created content isn't it? I've got a massive headache at the moment and things aren't really going in properly so I may be mistaken.

Dj_Jestar · 16 May 2007 at 17:40

punky_munky said:
I think some people are getting confused between Web 2.0 and AJAX. The article is mainly referring to managing user created content isn't it? I've got a massive headache at the moment and things aren't really going in properly so I may be mistaken.

Dj_Jestar said:
"Web 2.0" is a coined phrase by the media. It doesn't actually consist of anything; but some places will argue that XmlHttpRequest, ActiveX and just about anything that is asynchronous and/or more than "static" (loosely defined - i.e. you don't need to do a complete page refresh every post/get/etc) pages.

punky_munky · 16 May 2007 at 17:51

pinkaardvark · 16 May 2007 at 17:55

punky_munky said:
?

it's ok mate.. I understood you. Article talks about content management and personalisation features, which have been around for a good number of years now ie web parts etc in ASP.NET 2.0