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Comment by oinksoft | Hacker News Reader

Meanwhile a distracting footer covers >25% of the page, and clicking the intuitive "down arrow"-looking thing does nothing, nor is there an obvious close button. You close it with that über-readable burnt-orange-on-charcoal link "Ok, enough already. Hide the footer." Either they assume the user scans for "Ok," when wanting to close something, or that they skim sentences from the inside-out. If you do close it and click it again, which usually means "reopen", you instead get scrolled down to the bottom of the page.

Do you trust any advice they have about user interfaces?

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NoScript wins again. I didn't even know there was a problem until I went back and deliberately turned on scripting for the domain.

(I mention this just because in the periodic NoScript debates that show up here, I think people don't believe me when I say for every site it hurts, there's another site it silently improves.)

I agree completely, people always tell me that NoScript is too much of a hassle to use. But then two sentences later they'll complain about how ads cover content and distracting UI elements make it hard to navigate. I'd say 75% of the time I'm much happier with the NoScript version of websites.

I agree on the footer, but I'd go ahead and assume it's 100% intentional.

If I had to guess, it's to entice people to scroll down. I don't think it's done perfectly, but I do think the execution of this idea is better on http://goodui.org/howtoabtest.html

The fact that there is something there, and it's kind of hidden (at least on my screen) then there is this natural curiosity built up..

It's important to have good content to draw people downwards, but when you combine good content with small psychological tricks-- it might just pay off. The guy has 17K email subscribers and that is a lot of people who do trust him

Ugh. It felt extremely weird to read an entire article with that thing obscuring such a huge part of the bottom of the page. The best description of the feeling that I can think of is that it kind of felt like I was reading it by shoulder-surfing somebody else's browsing session on the train.

That, and the general focus of the content itself, put across a message of conversion-centric design rather than human-centric design. Ignoring the way a person feels while interacting your design just to increase signup conversions. Not nice.

Agreed, horrible interface - I didn't work out how to hide the banner. And the banner combined with the large font and big separation on the page made my reading feel really restricted - couldn't read it easily.

The footer is completely broken on the iPad

As I scroll, it keeps reappearing right in the middle of the content, then flashes away after 2 seconds

When I got to the end, it was nigh impossible to actually get the footer to show (or whatever the sign up box was) I finally got to enter my name but then going to [Next] on iPad just made the whole thing disappear and I couldnt get it back.

I like their ideas, really dislike their execution, that was a frustrating experience.

Totally agree with this, although they didn't invent the tips they're giving out, so there is still some value to the content.

And for me on my desktop the footer was so un-noticeable that I had to go back to the page to even see what it was that you had an issue with.

^ The x percent (of people still browsing the web on massive monitors) represent! (really? come on... surely not everyone's watching on laptops and tablets and phones at home?)

Don't be so hard - I think their page looks really nice and the suggestions make sense. I'll be using them when we update our landing page.

Not when their second advice is ... give a gift? What's that got to do with UI?

Edit: It's a good idea, great marketing idea, in fact. But when you're advertising ideas to improve UI, I will be quicker to judge...

Yeah, this is marketing/ad advice, not UI advice.

Their mobile experience is crummy. Words stacked up on one side, footer covers either part of the first page or part of the second.

The footer isn't so bad on a rMBP, but that's still not a very good excuse for why it's so big on lower resolution machines. I did find the information on the page quite helpful.

This is a trend I've noticed on a lot of sites that is unavoidable but still makes life harder for some. Now that everyone has high-resolution displays web elements tend to be built at larger sizes to get the same effective size on the newer screens. However, for people like me that spend half their time on a 1366x768 laptop, the elements just look huge and little meaningful content fits on the page. This is true of sites from The Verge to the new Google+ layout to even the text size on Medium.

Huh? All browsers on my rMBP upscales images( and css font-size specified in pixels )to match what the dimensions would be if the resolution were that of a standard 72-100dpi monitor.

Are there browsers where virtual pixels are not automatically scaled on retina displays?

What resolution are your running your rMBP at? I'm on 1920. When I change my settings, to the default resolution, things get worse.

I'm currently using a Dell U2410 display with a resolution of 1920x1200 and the banner was abnormally large.

I couldn't even see the "close" link because my font was too big and there was nothing that indicated that something was hidden.

I have to agree ... the footer is pretty stupid. I didn't even see a way to close it until I read your comment.

oooh! so _thats_ how you hide it :)

I actually didn't see the footer at all, shows how my brain learned to keep me sane.

And completely broken on iPhone.

I agree. Footer is annoying

I can certainly see some valid points. It's a bit unfair to judge fair points on the (poor) design choices the website made.

If your domain name is goodui.org and you lead with "A Good User Interface ... is easy to use." you'd better be damned serious about user interfaces. That's my take.

You are really harping on the footer.. I don't think that because you have 1 simple disagreement in his UI makes him "not dammed serious about user interfaces". The guy makes his life with UI.

Then it's a case of do as I say, not as I do. It's not just him who has a problem with, I did as well. And so did a bunch of others who had half their devices covered in landscape and almost 1/4 on their tablets in landscape.

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