What's with the boring design of modern websites?

[Hoofy]

They're all starting to look the same. See PH's own homepage.

And some are even doing massive scrollathons so everything's on one page.

Put the buttons back!!

[ReallyReallyGood]

To improve the UX for mobiles and tablets presumably.

[Hoofy]

I know that. But it's the font choices as well. It looks boring. Even on my phone.

[Crush]

All things in life require balance. It's very difficult to maintain, so delicate.

There was a time when the Internet moved forward, websites were slowly becoming more adventurous and developers were trying out new designs and layouts.

And then this happened














http://www.lingscars.com/

[Hoofy]

[Durzel]

ReallyReallyGood said:

To improve the UX for mobiles and tablets presumably.

This, really.

Fluid/responsive websites present a much more cohesive UX for end users, and the effort in creating them is front loaded vs having to update mobile websites, and apps, etc.

[Hoofy]

But I'm not talking about functionality as such. It's more the dull design. Something that looked nice 5 years ago could still be quick.

[durbster]

My heart sunk when I saw this thread title. I'm a developer and have been complaining about this a lot with designers.

There are several good reasons:
- As above, websites now have to work on any screen size and shape, so complex design just isn't possible (technically it is, but the reality is that it's very expensive).
- Designing for infinite screens is also a new era, so new ideas are yet to surface.
- The decline of Flash. Whether you loved it or hate it, it allowed infinite creativity in user interface and design.
- Fashion. Clients no longer just want a website, they want a site that "looks like that one".

[Burrow01]

The decline of Flash. Whether you loved it or hate it, it allowed infinite creativity in user interface and design.

This....

If Apple had continued support for Flash web sites would be much less boring now. Not being able to use Flash restricts what you can do enormously.

[ecs]

Burrow01 said:

The decline of Flash. Whether you loved it or hate it, it allowed infinite creativity in user interface and design.

This....

If Apple had continued support for Flash web sites would be much less boring now. Not being able to use Flash restricts what you can do enormously.

How so? What has not having Flash on an iPhone got to do with it's decline too? It's obsolete, there are better technologies out there and it's decline has forced browsers to get better and better.

[Du1point8]

But flash websites took an age to load and one of the golden rules is that if it takes more than a second or two to load, the user just shuts it down.

Plus a lot of people didn't want to keep upgrading flash, they are rubbish with SEO, no back buttons, dependant on 3rd party plugins, lots of bandwidth/CPU time.

Hell as far as I remember the company that actually created flash wouldn't even use it on their own site.

[Morningside]

I agree. Look at the new "Sky News" homepage. It looks like some Microsoft tiled thingy. But it also looks like something has forgot to load and half of it is missing (ie background).

[durbster]

ecs said:

How so? What has not having Flash on an iPhone got to do with it's decline too? It's obsolete, there are better technologies out there and it's decline has forced browsers to get better and better.

That's the problem - there aren't really. Browsers are improving but HTML is still a long way behind where Flash was years ago in many areas: performance, flexibility and consistency. HTML is a painfully slow ship to turn too so we're still along way off matching it as a tool.

Take video for example - a few years ago, a Flash video player was a 15 minute job that would work on everything. Doing the same now with HTML is a convoluted system of hacks, compromises and fallbacks despite being several years since Steve Jobs declared that it was ready to replace Flash.

I agree that it has forced welcome improvements in browsers though, particularly on performance. Even IE is bloody quick at rendering JS nowadays

[judas]

durbster said:

ecs said:

How so? What has not having Flash on an iPhone got to do with it's decline too? It's obsolete, there are better technologies out there and it's decline has forced browsers to get better and better.

That's the problem - there aren't really. Browsers are improving but HTML is still a long way behind where Flash was years ago in many areas: performance, flexibility and consistency. HTML is a painfully slow ship to turn too so we're still along way off matching it as a tool.

Take video for example - a few years ago, a Flash video player was a 15 minute job that would work on everything. Doing the same now with HTML is a convoluted system of hacks, compromises and fallbacks despite being several years since Steve Jobs declared that it was ready to replace Flash.

I agree that it has forced welcome improvements in browsers though, particularly on performance. Even IE is bloody quick at rendering JS nowadays

Part of the problem is still having to support browsers that should have been taken round the back of the barn and shot in the head many, many years ago

[MitchT]

ReallyReallyGood said:

To improve the UX for mobiles and tablets presumably.

Indeed. it's a pain trying to read something on your mobile when you have to click through page after page. Far better to have it all load in one go for you to scroll through. I don't get why the sites have to be the same for desktop/laptop and phone/tablet though. Surely it's easy enough to make a site that detects a computer or a mobile device and loads the appropriate version of the site. The Moonfruit site builder enables a simple mobile site to be created alongside the main one and mobiles automatically default to it with an option to use the main site instead.

[ecs]

durbster said:

That's the problem - there aren't really. Browsers are improving but HTML is still a long way behind where Flash was years ago in many areas: performance, flexibility and consistency. HTML is a painfully slow ship to turn too so we're still along way off matching it as a tool.

Take video for example - a few years ago, a Flash video player was a 15 minute job that would work on everything. Doing the same now with HTML is a convoluted system of hacks, compromises and fallbacks despite being several years since Steve Jobs declared that it was ready to replace Flash.

I agree that it has forced welcome improvements in browsers though, particularly on performance. Even IE is bloody quick at rendering JS nowadays

A modern browser on a recent computer will do 30fps - that'll give you decent quality animations. Flexibility - expand? Consistency is a problem, though the main issue I come across on a day to day basis is compatibility with IE and other obsolete browsers.

As for video, it sounds like you're doing it wrong.

[durbster]

judas said:

Part of the problem is still having to support browsers that should have been taken round the back of the barn and shot in the head many, many years ago

Absolutely.

I really believe the internet would be about five years ahead of where it is now if it wasn't for IE6. I reckon 30% of the total time spent on web development time in the past ten years has been on trying to get things to work in IE.

ecs said:

A modern browser on a recent computer will do 30fps - that'll give you decent quality animations. Flexibility - expand? Consistency is a problem, though the main issue I come across on a day to day basis is compatibility with IE and other obsolete browsers.

Fair enough in that performance is probably comparable now. But doing the animation takes longer as there's simply more code involved, plus fallbacks and all that.

ecs said:

As for video, it sounds like you're doing it wrong.

If you have a solution that doesn't require several videos in different codecs, that'll perform consistently on an iPad and an iPhone, I'm all ears.

[Martin4x4]

Substance is finally gaining traction over flashy so called 'style'.

[ecs]

durbster said:

judas said:

Part of the problem is still having to support browsers that should have been taken round the back of the barn and shot in the head many, many years ago

Absolutely.

I really believe the internet would be about five years ahead of where it is now if it wasn't for IE6. I reckon 30% of the total time spent on web development time in the past ten years has been on trying to get things to work in IE.

ecs said:

A modern browser on a recent computer will do 30fps - that'll give you decent quality animations. Flexibility - expand? Consistency is a problem, though the main issue I come across on a day to day basis is compatibility with IE and other obsolete browsers.

Fair enough in that performance is probably comparable now. But doing the animation takes longer as there's simply more code involved, plus fallbacks and all that.

ecs said:

As for video, it sounds like you're doing it wrong.

If you have a solution that doesn't require several videos in different codecs, that'll perform consistently on an iPad and an iPhone, I'm all ears.

There are a number of libraries available which will give you reliable, cross browser HTML animation. Try GSAP for size.

As for video, having to encode a file into a couple of different formats isn't exactly hacky.

[Halmyre]

Crush said:

All things in life require balance. It's very difficult to maintain, so delicate.

There was a time when the Internet moved forward, websites were slowly becoming more adventurous and developers were trying out new designs and layouts.

And then this happened

http://www.lingscars.com/

fk me. Battling Seizure Robots alert.