What's the story behind new format websites I keep seeing?

Chomeur

There seems to be a new format of website out currently with lots of panels that move around, big pictures, and, frankly, not that much information. For instance:

https://ubereats.com/london/ and

https://www.virginactive.co.uk/

I hate them - you have to scroll around so much to find what you want and they are often really slow to download. What are they all about?

Fightsback

Chomeur wrote: »

they are often really slow to download. What are they all about?

Well you've pretty hit the nail on the head, wasting bandwidth by over designing something and adding too much bloat. It's web designers wanting to show off rather than consider the end user.

Add things like noscript, adblockers and ghostery to your browser and that kills a lot of the excessive content.

stator

It's been going around for a while. They used to call it web 2.0 or something stupid.
I hate all new things.
The internet was better in 1995 when most websites were run by someone as a hobby and the place had a sense of community.
These days it's all spam, tweets and russian hackers trying to encrypt your hard drive

Zola.

I am a web designer - it is a bit of a design fad but it looks here to stay for the short term.

There are a number of reasons for this in my opinion:

- Huge array of smart devices.... Designing a site has to be considered across all mediums now, this new build fad is an easier / lazier step for a one design fits all approach.. also it is much easier to flick about around a site now on a tablet etc. Typically those graphics are just set to turn off when the browser detects the screen viewing the website is a phone.

- faster bandwidths everywhere allow for high res graphics - not really feasible a few years ago, playing into the 'woah look at this'

- Terrible, modern attention spans - people dont like reading and big images help create a bit of size and visual impact, words are kept concise now on most modern sites

Chomeur

Zola. wrote: »

I am a web designer - it is a bit of a design fad but it looks here to stay for the short term.

There are a number of reasons for this in my opinion:

- Huge array of smart devices.... Designing a site has to be considered across all mediums now, this new build fad is an easier / lazier step for a one design fits all approach.. also it is much easier to flick about around a site now on a tablet etc. Typically those graphics are just set to turn off when the browser detects the screen viewing the website is a phone.

- faster bandwidths everywhere allow for high res graphics - not really feasible a few years ago, playing into the 'woah look at this'

- Terrible, modern attention spans - people dont like reading and big images help create a bit of size and visual impact, words are kept concise now on most modern sites

Thanks. I was thinking that perhaps it was something to do with displaying on devices other than PCs. Anyway I hope that website designers appreciate that not everyone sees this sort of thing as progress. Does it have a name, so far as you know?

chunter

Websites that adapt to the platform they're being viewed on are called responsive websites.
I've just spent a couple of weeks writing myself a 100 page manual/reference on how to use bootstrap.
The old days of designing for a 1024 pixel layout are long gone.

Chomeur

chunter wrote: »

Websites that adapt to the platform they're being viewed on are called responsive websites.

I think it might be better if they didn't adapt. I can see (non adapting) web pages on my phone OK by pinching them in and out as need be and on my tablet there are no problems at all. This adaptation is at the cost of a lot of usability.

esuhl

I hate these bloated, badly-laid-out sites where everything appears so large and spread-out that you have to scroll through thirteen miles of photos and unlabelled buttons just to realise that the site isn't relevant after all.

As above, I think these designs look and work better on mobile devices. But on a PC monitor they look ridiculous.

What drives me crazy is that I use a trackball. You toggle "scroll mode" by clicking an extra button on the trackball (as there is no scroll wheel). The thing is... you need to do this on an unclickable area of the web page... And every square millimetre of some of these webpages has been marked as clickable.

And then there's the sites like Channel 5 / Demand 5, where you can't right-click a link and open it in a new tab. You're stuck browsing in a single window. Crazy.

almillar

As well as the above, you need to consider touch compatibility - so many people are using their fingers instead of their mouse to browse these days, on tablets, phones and even their computers. Some sites are just flashy for the sake of it though.

Strider590

We're heading back to the days of "Flash" websites that were utterly useless, no copy/paste, no opening new pages in a new tab, bandwidth heavy, browser back button would send you back to the previous websites, cinfusing to navigate, etc, etc, etc.

The other one is flip page catalogues, instead of a simple searchable PDF file. Mouse flipping through 2000 pages of rubbish, to find what your looking for is NOT fun.
The internet is a powerful tool, but there's always some "tool" that wants to turn it into a ****ing book.

Its not the web designers, its their customers.