But muh software has opinions! If you donât like muh opinions, get different softwares!
Well, to quote the article, fucking fuckity fuck fuck, I guess. The irony that my post will get deleted for language is bittersweet, like tears on Turkish Delight.
The web has totally gotten worse. Itâs not like itâs now a matured industry with a massive focus on UX and usability.
Might as well be âGuy shouts at cloudsâ.
The irony of course being that the only reason heâs frustrated to begin with is that heâs grown use to online experiences being so smooth, and so exceptions become irritating.
As someone that spends 8 hours a day making people like this less frothy Iâm just glad he kept it to his personal blog - shame someone thought it worth sharing, stares at @beschizza.
It was an okay rant. Need more confusing charts and graphs. Also, I didnât see any xkcd, oatmeal, or onion references. Two demerits for that.
However.
SO. MUCH. THIS.
As soon as you say âWhen I did ⌠back in the 90sâ perhaps you should think twice about continuing your train of thought.
Some of the things he mentioned are valid complaints, some of his problems are actually there for security reasons and others are just part of a hissy fit.
Oh totally, theyâre mostly valid complaints, but addressing them as âthis is everything thatâs wrong with the internet todayâ is just absurd - especially as most of them are complaints about apps or his odd use-cases, not âthe internetâ. And the web certainly isnât getting slower - if he wants data I can provide it on request 
Equally, âI donât keep any cookiesâŚâ. So you turn off a fundamental device used for pretty much any website that needs to maintain consistency between page loads and youâre surprised that you have issues? Good god man.
Google is mainly to blame for websites that postload image content as well. Those sites are trying to score better in googleâs ranking by being faster to finish the dom load. They do that by loading the images after the dom is displayed. The ones who do this right at least know what the sizes of the images will be so the format of the page doesnât change. The ones that do it wrong will make the page shift and warp as the images come in, making it difficult to hit a link.
Also, using two-factor authentication where the second factor is protected by the same two-factor auth (google voice in this case) is dumb. Thatâs entirely on him.
Also, âI donât keep any cookies or browse historyâ Have fun logging into every site, every time. No wonder youâre complaining about 2-factor auth (which is awesome and should be the standard everywhere) if youâre unwilling to keep a cookie on your machine that says âtrust this machine.â
2/10 for usefulness. 8/10 for old man is confused by technology. 
A lot of these complaints seem to come down to âI never leave anything logged in (for security reasons, presumably?) but then having to use security features to get into my account is a pain in the assâ. The way I look at it - my computer requires a password to get into it. If somebody manages to bypass that password, Iâm already severely compromised, so having to login to fucking Skype every god damned time I want to use it is a waste of my time.
Some valid complaints, sure, but things like the baby pictures complaints? Why not just download them from your phone in the first place? Or send them to your mom from the phone itself? Why go through the hassle of the auto-backup to Google Photos, then trying to get them back from Google Photos to your computer, when you can just plug the phone into your computer and have it auto-download every photo on there? My Google Photos backup is exactly that - an emergency backup, in case the normal methods of saving my photos go tits up.
Take a look at the computers that got us to the Moon.
Then compare with the computers we need to send an email.
The software is definitely getting slower.
And the AJAX bullshit, all the AJAX bullshit!!!
(Another example of a good servant becoming bad masterâŚ)
My mum can use Yahoo mail. I donât think she could fly a space ship.
Iâve read the BBS long enough to know that you are a very smart person @shaddack - in fact Iâd probably entrust you to build a spaceship - but Iâd like to think youâd be the first to appreciate that you donât (in any way whatsoever) represent the usability needs of the average internet user.
But ajax⌠yea I can appreciate that. Itâs an amazing technology that some crucial experiences would fail without - but it can also be really poorly implemented, or used in places where it really shouldnât be. This BBS implements it quite well, mind.
Agamemnon tends to agree, but I like ajax design patterns when used well.
Always point to a non redirected resource (do the god damn redirection behind your load balancers in your web tier, ffs)
Build your Dom correctly, and set your element sizes (yes, you can still use fluid layouts, I promise. But things wonât jump around)
While overly complex and heavy middleware like struts sucks, the idea of nearly mandatory input validation doesnât. Validate, trim, and fixup inputs at every. Stage.
How about the infuriating quirk where Boingboing loves to completely reload the main page every time I return to it with the back button. Pfft, caching, who needs that.
Or the weird ass dynamic loading/unloading of comments on long discussions?
Or how sometimes clicking on a story takes you straight to the discussion. Or sometimes it takes you to the full version of the story. Or maybe itâll take you to the site the story came from! Or how about the story summaries being clickable links even if thereâs no visual hint that this is the case.
Can we go back to 2008?
https://web.archive.org/web/20080818062108/http://www.boingboing.net/
I donât always use meta refresh on Ajax pages, but when I do its always content=â3â.
Oh, and from the OP:
Dude, youâre the one that set that password. WTF are you complaining about?
Probably for the sake of ads. Could be wrong though, and Iâd be interested to hear why it does it - canât be arsed to investigate myself just now (Iâm supposed to be working, sssh).
Thatâs actually pretty smart - if not a bit finicky (especially on iOS, ESPECIALLY if youâre trying to comment on iOS). The idea is that if you link to a comment, or click through to the thread, you donât have to ask the database to fetch hundreds of comments and then get your browser to render them all. The idea is that it just saves you from having to click ânext/previousâ all the time. And on a good connection on a desktop computer it does work pretty seamlessly.
Canât say Iâve ever seen this one - wouldnât the title just be using the_permalink() - given that itâs a wordpress site, @deanputney ?
As someone thatâs worked with the web for over a decade, NO.
Totes, it is only like 13 characters. Real passphrases start at 30.
BTW, correct horse battery staple is literally like 0.5% of all pass phrases. THANKS RANDALL!!
Hereâs how that thing works:
-
If the post is a long one, and only an excerpt appears on the homepage, clicking it goes to the full post where you can read the rest.
-
If the post is so short that it appears in full on the homepage, clicking it goes to the discussion instead, because you donât need to read it twice.
More specifically, most of the complains seem to be about Google, which really has seemed to shit the bed in relation to good interface design lately.
Ah, I stand corrected @xzzy - it seems you are correct here.
@beschizza I donât think thatâs very good usability tbh - but maybe this was done for good reason. Do enough of your users even click through to comments for that to be a desired result of clicking on the title? Iâd personally just remove the link and make it more obvious that itâs standalone content, in those cases.
Edit: Iâd misunderstood - the dynamic link is the labelled button link, not the title.
