reflections

There are a two UX trends happening now that are absolutely infuriating and cause me to waste precious time every day: awful Mobile versions of sites, and popup login boxes that don’t respect browser password managers.

These atrocious mobile versions of sites are replicating like cells because the publishers seem to think I have a circa 2000 era cellphone and want to force a lowest common denominator experience upon us. Between iOS and Android devices, there are probably about 200M users whose devices can render the real experience, so let us choose how we want to experience it. And while you’re at it, please stop disabling pinch and zoom…

The other huge gripe is that they have “full site” links, always at the bottom of an incredibly long scrolling page, which when clicked does one of two things: it doesn’t work whatsoever, or if it does, it loads the full site at the root level (ie the homepage) of the site and not the page you were viewing. Neither of these are solutions by any definition of the word.

As for the modal login boxes, they too are replicating because they’re perceived to be an acceptable UX design pattern, which they’re not. By ignoring browser password managers, they too cause a negative experience. I have my laptop locked down, but if for some reason someone gets in, I am not going to be too worried about whether the intruder has access to your blog or SaaS, so stop coming up with new ways to make me waste cycles. Just honor our choices and settings…