Small but significant usability sins that websites should never commit

If I'm entering a credit card number, let me type the fucking spaces. Use JS to trim them before they hit the server if you have to. I once used a site that had JS specifically to prevent me from typing a space, and it was <i>infuriating</i>, because exactly the same amount of engineering effort could have gone into just letting me type it the way I wanted to.

&#62; Don’t open links in new browser tabs. Tabbed browsing is for advanced users. If you open a page in a new tab, most users will get lost. . .<p>And many of the advanced ones will still get irritated. I can manage my own tabs, TYVM, and don't appreciate it when web designers presumptuously attempt to decide for me when I do and do not want a page to open in a new one.

I strongly disagree with some of these from the user feedback I've always heard. Yes, I'm sure target audience matters on some of the points but come on, "Most users don’t know what FAQ stands for". That's just ridiculous and you provide no evidence to support this claim. I feel like these "sins" are major shots in the dark with no real studies to back up such big claims.

This article was written to express findings of one study ("two days running usability tests") with specific products ("websites that sell financial products like life cover, funeral policies, and annuities") for a specific target market ("lower-income users who access the Internet at least once a day on a desktop at home or work, or on their phones").<p>Take the information with a grain of salt. It's a positive thing to think about how a user outside of the early adopter cohort will use a product. Maybe not right at first, but at least later on when your company outgrows (hopefully) its first users.

Always know your audience. Hacker News readers are not most users and you won't always be designing for them. You wouldn't believe what hangs up most users unless you saw it yourself. This is true for the web as well as all devices. Forgo testing with real users and prepare for a high bounce rate.

Disagree with the "never" highlight rows in a table. If you have a number-heavy table with lots of rows and columns, it's the perfect way to help users read the data shown.<p>Of course, this sort of thing is more common on intranet sites, not exposed to the general public, so it's simply "Know Your Audience", as usual.

These are <i>far</i> to presumptive to be general truths. You mean to tell me that the percentage of (even first-time) visitors to Hacker News that know what PDFs and FAQs are is less than 99%?<p>Also where is your data coming from in the first place? Are your claims based on any non-anecdotal evidence?

While these sins are good things to be thinking about when building a site lists like this can be dangerous if they cause people to make a fundamental error; assuming you know what "most users" or the "average user" know or want without actually doing some basic usability/UX testing.<p>One of the most important things to consider when thinking about usability/UX is that if you built it then you're not a good authority on what it's like to use it.

I would add not using the relevant cursor for things that are clickable. Its not perfect ( especially for mobile), but its a huge hint.

&#62; Don’t open links in new browser tabs<p>I agree that this can be confusing, but it's helpful for external links. I'd rather have a user be confused for a minute than have them completely forget about my website. Not to mention, when you close the new tab you'll probably end up looking at the tab containing my site again. At the end of the day, it's a usability vs visibility tradeoff.<p>&#62; Don't have an FAQ page<p>Do you really think most users don't know what a FAQ is? Unless your target audience is 12 year olds I really doubt this is true. I do agree though that having a separate page for your FAQ means your workflow is lacking the proper information users are looking for.<p>&#62; Don’t give table rows highlighting mouse-overs if the rows aren’t clickable<p>Totally agree. I think this is the biggest thing Twitter bootstrap gets wrong. Sure it's easier for lining up a row, but if you use zebra striping that won't be an issue.

Are there really only five? I think you could write a book ;)

I'd like to add: Don't reprogram the command sequence for browser page search to a site specific search bar.

Another important thing to consider is your target audience. If you are designing a site like github that targets developers then you can probably assume they know what a FAQ page is.<p>I think that overall, this article isn't highlighting sins, but more pet-peeves. I get annoyed by some of these things as well and I think good website designs should incorporate better options. But unless you present me with a study that is broken down by generation on who doesn't know what a FAQ is I'm going to have to throw the BS flag here.

&#62; Don’t open links in new browser tabs<p>&#62; Tabbed browsing is for advanced users. If you open a page in a new tab, most users will get lost<p>This is the default behaviour for Twitter and Facebook, two of the biggest sites on the net. It is arguably the biggest reason why FF originally won market share over IE. And Chrome centres it's whole UI around tabs.<p>Maybe for certain audiences this is still good advice but I don't think it is a truism anymore.

This is an interesting post (the required-field point in particular), but I think I'll make the opposite of the usual HN page-usability complaint. Unlike a lot of blog posts I've looked at today, this design is clean, readable, and doesn't try to give me a headache with low-contrast text.<p>It's a pleasure <i>not</i> to have to hit Readable for once.

There's a lot of positing here. To assume the "average user" doesn't understand what browser tabs, PDFs, and FAQs are seems ... odd. Now these may or may not be fine tips, but they are not recommendations based on best practices or any research that I can tell. If they are, I'd be interested in seeing it.

The one about highlighted table rows makes total sense.

the asterisk. even after 10 years of this (or is it 15?) i still look for the footnote :(<p>... made worse by the fact that sometimes there is one!