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Comment by drcode | Hacker News Reader

That is one of the worst product websites I have ever seen... I have an updated version of Chrome and Win8.1 and am either too stupid to figure out how to navigate the site or it simply doesn't work at all. Does anyone else have a diagonal divider that runs away from you if you bring your mouse near it?

That said, looks at first glance like an innovative product- If someone can post a link to a website for mere mortals that describes the camera's features I might actually read about what it can do.

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Engadet has a hands-on with the camera:

http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/22/lytro-illum/

Yes, I have to fight with that diagonal divider as well.

Here's what I see: When the mouse is not on the screen, you see 2 pages, both with some important infos missing (which is a usability disaster).

Only once you move the mouse to one of those two areas, a stuttery animation with z-buffer flickering issues enlarges that area somewhat to show all relevant info.

Pages further down in the navigation order look bad, because the diagonal divider cross the navigation list, and some of the background images in mouse-not-on-the-screen state are behind the navigation, and since they have the same brightness level, the navigation is difficult to read.

The screen order includes a splash page. This is bad design because the user has no options where to go next. The button icon to proceed is also misleading: it's a round button with a down arrow.

Very particular.

The main problem is it takes some amount of time to figure out how to navigate. It should just be inherent.

The webmaster needs a copy of Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think” … http://brad.me/1pot03u

It's not just you. These kind of un-scrollable sites are awful. The funky diagonal line adds to the confusion.

It looks like HTML5 has opened up the same avenues of UI abuse that Flash did.

Web designers need to stop breaking basic browser functionality in their pursuit of creativity.

Yes, yes, yes. I don't know who started this horrible trend but I look forward the time this assault on basic usability gets shelved on the museum of past UX horrors where it belongs.

Please give this website to every designer you know:

http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

The design is baffling. I couldn't figure out how to navigate the page by scrolling, until I gave up and started clicking the links on the right side. I still have no idea what that diagonal line is for.

I was able to figure it out, but it was still annoying. Equally annoying was that it JS-hotlinked each section of the website requiring me to press the back button a million times to get back to the last actual webpage.

Hot-linking is cool, but storing it in the browsing history is not.

Interesting, the product page looks really great and quite clear to me.

Maybe I'm just an outlier and it works well for other people.

I too was exceedingly confused about the diagonal line. Atrocious design.

It's pretty grim for me in Opera too.

Performance is terrible on Chrome 32 and a 2013 MBA with 8GB RAM.

I didn't have a problem with it until I read your comment. Then I went back and re-tried it. Somehow, I just couldn't quite wrap my head around how to use it... Perhaps it's the act of me trying to "overthink" how to use the UI as opposed to just using it in what comes natural through innocent exploration.

The problem is that you have to think at all. It should be inherent and automatic for you to navigate where you want to go as a user. If you have to pause to figure out how to use the UI then the designers have failed.

I figured it out, but only because I've seen plenty of this horrible style before.

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