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What impresses you on a website?
Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 4:22 pm
by onion2k
We've all been using the web for a few years at least now. We've probably seen ideas come and ideas go. Myself, I started at this over 10 years ago now. I tested my first site in Mosaic. I've seen frames rise and fall, Javascript come and go and come back again, VRML ... well, flop from the off really. I've witnessed Flash's prolific explosion, and then calming. The biggest change I've seen is the growth of scripting and databases. Starting with small things like contact forms and ecards, through the crazy rise of ecommerce and portals, and into todays massive user oriented websites. It's all come and a lot of it has gone again, and without a doubt every new technology has had me going "Woah! That's so cool!" at some point.
What impressed you most recently on the internet? Something AJAX? Flash? Audio? Video? Social networking? XML? VML?
Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 4:41 pm
by feyd
Valid pages that degrade gracefully (upgrade unobtrusively.)
Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 5:01 pm
by RobertGonzalez
feyd wrote:Valid pages that degrade gracefully (upgrade unobtrusively.)
+1. That is by far the coolest thing around... when a site uses technology to enhance its offering. At bare bones, it is still a functional informative markup document, but when the user has the tools enabled, it becomes a zinger of a user experience without the user even knowing about all the stuff behind the scenes.
Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 5:02 pm
by Arawn
It's usually not the technology that I find impressive but how people overcome the challenges to implement the technology. Sort of like AppleTV, I'm not really woah'ed by it but when
EETimes took AppleTV apart and analyzed it this week then AppleTV got a woah out of me. Wish there was an "Under the Hood" column for websites.
Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 6:16 pm
by Ollie Saunders
Wish there was an "Under the Hood" column for websites.
Now that is a great idea.
Oh and I 100% agree with feyd. AJAX will probably be replaced by something else later. One day we may see the death of HTTP as we know it.
Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 7:41 pm
by superdezign
Well, as a developer, the stuff that impresses me is stuff that I use and think, "How the hell would I go about trying to make this??"
Facebook comes to mind.
Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 9:25 pm
by alex.barylski
Everah wrote:feyd wrote:Valid pages that degrade gracefully (upgrade unobtrusively.)
+1. That is by far the coolest thing around... when a site uses technology to enhance its offering. At bare bones, it is still a functional informative markup document, but when the user has the tools enabled, it becomes a zinger of a user experience without the user even knowing about all the stuff behind the scenes.
That never even remotely cross my mind until about a year ago or so after a lengthly disscussion with...snap...whats his name? no longer a member...he took his ball and went home...
Oh gees...I really can't remember, but anyways. After some lengthly disscussion with him and listening to others I realized that...he was right. A professional developer is not just limited to effectively using OOP, good practices, etc focusing on the backend but making the interface responsive and one that degrades gracefully.
It's a quick and easy sign that the application itself is likley developed slightly better than comparable apps. It takes skill and experience to pull off AJAX coated applications which work well in non-supporting browsers. Not just any hack can do it.
It's now become one of my many factors I include in my reviewing web applications for use.
+2 for me

Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 9:28 pm
by alex.barylski
superdezign wrote:Well, as a developer, the stuff that impresses me is stuff that I use and think, "How the hell would I go about trying to make this??"
Facebook comes to mind.
I just started using Facebook. It is nice....waaaaay nicer experience than myGarbage...but does it degrade graceful?
I've seen a lot of applications which utilize AJAX to the nines but break under Opera or similar and disabling JS to actually hope in using the application doesn't help.
AJAX is cool but it's best when employed as a additional layer of interaction not dependent on it.
Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 11:01 pm
by Kieran Huggins
facebook does seem to degrade gracefully - I'm impressed all to hell.
I think the biggest wow factor for me is a good UI design. When something just works (and works well) with little to no learning curve, that's impressive. Facebook does this well, so does last.fm. It's way harder than it looks!
Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 2:14 am
by Ollie Saunders
Yes. What still shocks me is the amount of effort that has to go into producing an app. Its only when you have many people that things can go quickly.
Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 2:16 am
by onion2k
Kieran Huggins wrote:When something just works (and works well) with little to no learning curve, that's impressive. Facebook does this well, so does last.fm. It's way harder than it looks!
That doesn't apply to facebook. There's loads of things about it that are completely strange to a new user. Poking and wall-to-wall being prime examples.
Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 2:57 am
by djot
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If I see something, that looks good (new, interesting, fascinating), I am not impressed right away.
But "What impresses [s]you[/s] me on a website[s]?[/s]" is, if this fancy thing works, when I click (use) it.
djot
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Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 3:23 am
by jayshields
I use Facebook quite a lot and I occasionally read the developers blog. I've been looking into their API - that's awesome.
Although letting anyone release apps for anyone else to use with no approval from admins results in faulty apps.
Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 3:41 am
by phpdevuk
I think for me not much has changed in my perceptions of what makes a website impressive (ignoring technology changes), I still look for sites with a good strong design which is not too cluttered or over done, I like the navigation on a site to be clear and intuitive to use, nothing irritates me more than going round in circles like on some big companies website try to find a page I know is there. Features that work to this end often get a response of "wow thats cool" out of me, and to some extent ajax has been able to effect some of these things.
Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 3:57 am
by CoderGoblin
The information I am after, where I expect it to be, with the minimum of effort (mouse clicks/typing).
All the graphics/features are pointless without this. You see too many sites trying to dazzle you with "features" but failing to get the content right. It is often the case that the "public" is impressed/has different expectations to the "technophiles" who write the pages. Being pretty can draw a person in. Without good content accessibility they are unlikely to come back on a regular basis.