Stupidity 2.0

26 May 2006

What a shame.

I wish I wasn’t exaggerating slightly. Web 2.0, for me at least, has come to signify everything bad about the current state of online development. Yes, we have cool new-ish (I don’t think Ajax can be called new) technology being utilised in interesting was, but what’s new about that?

I find it staggering that people have utterly failed to learn from the dotcom crash of a few years ago. We’re seeing more and more sites that don’t have a proper business model – YouTube being the prime example. Didn’t we figure out that you actually, you know, have to make money.

Another disturbing trend I’ve noticed recently – and this one’s really not new – is a complete lack of thought by web site designers for basic usability. There’s an ever-growing amount of sites that are using ajax exclusively for their navigation, which is stupid in so many ways – the number one reason being that it breaks the back button, but there are other downsides as well (how does it work with a screen reader? What if javascript is disabled?).

Also, can people stop with the unnecessary use of drag and drop? If I want to add something to a shopping cart, I just want to click a button – not drag it there. Here’s a clue: if you have to have pop up instructions on how it works, it’s probably not well designed.

So, instead of Web 2.0 how about Stupidity 2.0? It’s not as though anyone knows what Web 2.0 is anyway…

From: Articles

26 May 2006