Bad Web Sites Can Cause "Mouse Rage"

alphadogg writes "Badly designed Web sites may have negative effects on a user's immune, cardiovascular, and nervous systems, a study says. The study of 2,500 users was commissioned by Rackspace Managed Hosting and published by the UK's Social Issues Research Centre. It found that five technology flaws in Web sites may have deleterious effects." How long before the first class action suit in the U.S. over bad Web site design?

How long before the first class action suit in the

How long before the first class action suit in the U.S. over bad Web site design?

My reply: Didn't we already have the blind sue over something similar to this?

Re:How long before the first class action suit in

Didn't we already have the blind sue over something similar to this?

Bump.

Re:How long before the first class action suit in

I am not defending the MS site design but you must mean patches only released to customers experiencing a particular problem. The KB article will usually tell you to contact MS Support for patches not available on their website.

If you are talking about Service Packs, Critical Updates, and those types of things then you can get most of those things by going to windowsupdate.microsoft.com (in IE click on Tools -> Windows Update).

You can also find the Exchange 2K3 downloads in a few clicks.

* www.microsoft.com/exchange
* Click Downloads on the left navigation pane
* Click Exchange 2003 Server downloads on the top right

From there I was able to download SP2 (Using Firefox) in another 2 clicks.

It may not be perfect but the MS site is much better than many other sites. Have you ever tried downloading updates or drivers from IBM? IBM Support can't even tell you how. IBM Support will give you a filename to put in their search form to find the download. It has been this way for 10 years. PATHETIC!

Re:How long before the first class action suit in

>...ponders if heavily flashing websites can cause seizures.
Yes they can but epileptics are wise enough to move on if they see anything likely to cause a problem
As the old joke says:
Patient: 'Doctor, it hurts everytime I hit my head on a wall'
Doctor: 'Well stop doing it then.'

Re:How long before the first class action suit in

I'm not blind, you insensitive clod! I'm visionally challenged!

What is a company executive doing on this site?

I find this to be ironic...

Steal an mp3 = zillions of dollars in damages

Cause health problems for thousands or millions = no damages?

And people tell me that corporations don't have special rights.......

hint: I mean, let's take away the corporations' special rights...

Re:I find this to be ironic...

And people tell me that corporations don't have special rights.......

Those rights arise from the "corporate person" employing a fleet of lobbyists and lawyers who know how to grease palms, exploit loopholes and drag out legal liabilities for eons. That's one ridiculously powerful person.

Special rights indeed... let's suppose I'm a physical person with the resources that a corporate person has, and I just find it too much of an effort and hassle to seek out a trash can every time I finish off a can of soda. Well, I'm going to lobby, influence and bribe the proper authorities (congressmen and courts especially) to make littering legal. Sound ridiculous? That's exactly how the corporate climate functions.

The slippery slope began the moment a judge (in the 1860's or 70's, I believe) ruled on the side of the corporation being a "person", an exploit that arose from the misuse of a piece of legislation designed (horribly, it seems) to protect the rights of the black man in the United States after slavery had been abolished. Again, fleets of lawyers exploiting loopholes.

Imagine giving special rights to caucasians to litter in the street all they want, but if an african, asian, hispanic or middle-eastern person gets caught trying to pull it off, they get penalized. If a corporation is a "person", we are living the equivalent of special rights for a minority, and we (physical persons) are all being discriminated against.

To make matters worse, I'm under the impression that only certain corporations get the special treatment, as many mom-and-pop businesses are structured as corporations - remember that corporate status prevents personal assets from being seized in case of business woes such as bankrupcy. A few transnational rotten apples have spoiled the basket for the vast majority of well-intentioned endeavours. However, the abuses of the transnationals are such that we seem to be past the critical point in several crucial aspects for the economy, society and even the species as a whole. Many informed and concerned individuals are fed up and itching for change, even if just to err on the side of caution.

Intriguingly, there were elections last May in Northern California, and the people of Humboldt County voted by a margin of about 60%-40% to abolish the status of "person" to corporations. Maybe little will come of this, but maybe other counties around the nation will put up similar propositions to its' voters, there will be a confrontation, and a decision makes it all the way to the Supreme Court. Maybe it's happened before, but this is not the sort of shit that makes the nightly news, even though it may be one of the crucial issues of our times. Also, I wouldn't hold my breath with the current Supreme Court under Baby Bush. Nor under a democrat president either, to be honest.

Does anybody knows if the Humboldt County experiment has been attempted before? And secondly, even though it can be considered a landslide election, how come 40% of the population, even in liberal Humboldt, would vote to keep the legal status of corporations as "people"? To stay one step ahead of the implicit joke here: what were they smoking?

Cease and Desist

How long before the first class action suit in the U.S. over bad Web site design?

Depends on how long it takes my Cease and Desist letter to arrive at CmdrTaco's house. Given the USPS, it might not arrive for weeks!

Re:Cease and Desist

What I want to know is whether I can sue Logitech after my mouse goes flying through my monitor (or friend's face) in the course of using it correctly as instructed by the owner's manual.

Perfect excuse for not coming in to work tomorrow!

"Sorry boss, but slashdot's ugly IT color scheme weakened my immune system and now I'm sick so I can't come in today"

Ironic

It's ironic that this article appears on the EETimes, which is so chock-full of advertisements that it's difficult to tell where the article ends. Not to mention the annoying flash popup that activates if you mouse-over the corner of the page.

Re:Ironic

Adblock is your friend. Also i personally use flashblock with adblock to prevent unwanted flash.

Bad websites

Oh man, nothing gets me madder then websites that are doing very simple things, but don't work! I bet I've caused more damage throwin' my mouse around than any of those stupid Wii users. Gotta find me a nice sturdy wrist starp for my mouse.

Yes, "Mouse Rage Syndrome"

Or as those of us who aren't pretentious call it: "anger."

Re:Yes, "Mouse Rage Syndrome"

Or as those of us who aren't pretentious call it: "anger."

Ah, but if it's a 'syndrome', you can blame someone for it. If it's just anger, it's your own foolish fault you broke your brand new 21" monitor.

I'd like to read the report

I'm specifically interested in this so-called "perfect website" that was used as a baseline.

Other factors could contribute also, from the ergonomics and lighting of the testing facility to the colors of the sites presented.

How many of these sites were Flash vs standards-based? What was the average text size? Contrast between text and background? Number of images, and their sizes? How about CSS vs table layouts? How did "Pretty" sites (eg, digg.com) fare against "ugly" sites (eg, cragslist)? Static navigation elements vs complex multi-level fly-out menus? There are a lot of possible factors and criteria that go unmentioned, at least in TFA.

"The message is clear: Businesses need to provide simple and easy-to-navigate layouts, whilst focusing on speed and uptime."

I'm not sure if I completely agree with the implication that hardware infrastructure and network reliability trumps usability. For me, a site that is designed badly or behaves badly on the browser side is a greater offense than a site that loads a little slower than most.

Navigation is but a portion of layout. Other studies have shown that the brain subconsciously identifies all the major areas of a web page (header, navigation, main content, ancillary content) in 1/20 of a second after the page loads, and that the common practice of placing navigation/secondary content a left-hand column causes people to ignore anything in the right-side column (a phenomenon known as "right side blindness"), because people have learned that most of the time, what's in the right-hand column is less related (if it's relevant at all) to their task at hand... typically third party banners or other cruft.

I hope that the conclusion is that modern, CSS driven, user-centric designs are less stress inducing than bloated, image-laden table layouts, but I get the feeling that the reseearchers aren't prepared to commit to saying it.

Re:I'd like to read the report

I'm not sure if I completely agree with the implication that hardware infrastructure and network reliability trumps usability. For me, a site that is designed badly or behaves badly on the browser side is a greater offense than a site that loads a little slower than most.

Ah, but you're not in the server hardware business. From the business name, it sounds like the guy you were quoting (whose company commissioned the study) is in exactly that business.

Navigation is but a portion of layout. Other studies have shown that the brain subconsciously identifies all the major areas of a web page (header, navigation, main content, ancillary content) in 1/20 of a second after the page loads, and that the common practice of placing navigation/secondary content a left-hand column causes people to ignore anything in the right-side column (a phenomenon known as "right side blindness"), because people have learned that most of the time, what's in the right-hand column is less related (if it's relevant at all) to their task at hand... typically third party banners or other cruft.

In one of the few articles worth reading on UseIT [useit.com] in recent years, Jakob Nielsen describes the results of their eye-tracking studies into how users read web pages [useit.com] as an "F" shape. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when you look at some real pages with the eye-tracking data, you see a combination of several effects: the user typically scans across for selected lines (headings?) but less so as they get further down the page, scans the left side of the main column and any extra column to the left (usually menus?), and will also focus on obviously relevant boxes to the right (shopping carts? menus?). IMHO it's worth a read if you're interested in this sort of thing.

I hope that the conclusion is that modern, CSS driven, user-centric designs are less stress inducing than bloated, image-laden table layouts, but I get the feeling that the reseearchers aren't prepared to commit to saying it.

I hope they wouldn't. After all, why should a user see any difference at all between CSS-driven and table-layout-driven sites, if the tools are used to generate the same effect? (Please don't tell me the research is really about accessibility, which is the only compelling reason I have so far seen for moving to CSS if you have an existing table-based layout on your site that works acceptably. The rest is mostly hype IME, usually proposed by people with a vested interest.)

Re:Websites?! Try Operating Systems!

You tell the truth. I have considered bagging myself a few IE and Windows devs myself...but the whole killing is a crime thing works against that.

No way! Someone did "user testing" of websites?

Whoa. That's some advanced sheot!

It's hard-core science, too. Look at the scientifical results:

The report stated, "Some changes in muscle tension were quite dramatic While this was happening, the participants faces also tensed visibly, with the teeth clenched together and the muscles around the mouth becoming taught. These are physically uncomfortable situations that reduce concentration and increase feelings of anger."

I'm surprised that nobody [useit.com] has ever [websiteoptimization.com] done anything [sensible.com] like this before!

Wow! It found exactly what it was paid to find?

...commissioned by Rackspace Managed Hosting...

And from the article, "What's the root cause of Mouse Rage Syndrome? It's primarily caused by badly ... hosted Web sites". "And, of course, the killer cause: site unavailability.", "Unfortunately, many Web sites and their servers cannot deliver this."

Weirdest thing, a study bought (sorry, "paid for") by a managed hosting company found that poorly hosted sites are a bad thing.

Whatever's next? Will a Microsoft funded study find that Windows has a lower total cost of ownership than Linux? A UK music industry funded study will find that most people support an extension of copyright terms? A Lybian court will find Bulgarian nurses guilty of infecting children with a strain of HIV that's been around since before the nurses entered the country and that it's absolutely nothing to do with pre-existing poor hygene conditions at the Lybian hospital? Those that want funding under the Bush administration will find Climate Change isn't real? Why on earth aren't hundreds of scientists speaking out and decrying such blatantly biased research?

Crazy.

Hazzardous to health

I'm waiting for some one to have an epileptic fit from all the flashing banners on some sites.

#1 offender:

Amazon.com

Decent selection (on certain things) and prices that are worth considering (especially when on sale). But...

1) Why does the search suck? Why can I not easily differentiate between different versions of the same product? The worst is when you do this with books. Sometimes you'll get screens of the seemingly same item, and the differences are slight, such as publication edition, extras included, hardback, or paperback... but NONE OF THAT SHOWS UP. You have to click on each result and dig down HARD to find the difference.

2) Why is it once I enter one of the sections (such as books) by selecting the drop down menu in the search area (books) and entering a query, I can no longer search the music section the same way? Suddenly the search drop down menu changes to book subsections and a generic, whole sitewide 'amazon.com' search. I can either take my chances with the site wide search, or click on the home page button and do the search again with the correct section selected.

2) Why is there SO MUCH CRAP all over the place?

I tend to avoid amazon simply because of interface aggravation, especially when I can help out a local seller. It's a testimony to the crappiness of amazon that the balance of getting in a car/taking public trans and visiting my (albeit awesome) local booksellers beats out rolling out of bed, strugglign to find what I need at their online store, and wrestling with the checkout clicks...

Btw, I do like the minimal amazon search that is available, but it doesn't alleviate any of the above since you still have to hit the site after the results are obtained.

Re:#1 offender:

Why does the search suck?

You left off the single most glaring problem with Amazon's search...

Why do they not have a great big checkbox to only show "real" Amazon products (ie, exclude all their BS "marketplace" partners, who almost without fail advertise great prices but then shipping costs higher than the actual products, thus making "sort by lowest price" useless)?

I can live with having to read product details before I buy. But having to get to the LAST step of checking out before I can see that a $10 item will cost me $15 in shipping (real example!) just drives me up a frickin' wall.

internal corporate sites

The worst offenders are internal corporate sites built on expensive proprietary technology that offers a lot of heavy framework so business analysts can design byzantine workflows. While the client user interface may be theoretically "web-based" it isn't regular old HTML. It has to be client-side java, or at the very least, lots and lots of javascript, so it feels like client-side java. All this is for filling out forms and navigation, mind you, we're not talking fancy graphics or AJAX or anything. Naturally, these sites are IE-only, and very particular about which version of IE at that.

This kind of site couldn't survive for long outside a corporate firewall. Too slow, bloated, difficult to navigate, unsecure, and downright ugly. But when your paycheck depends on using a mandated interface to fill out a trouble ticket, timesheet, or expense report, you just click and bear it.

Oh yeah, in my job I support a site like this. The back end isn't any better.

This is the REAL reason

This is one of the dumbest things I've heard in a long time!

It has NOTHING to do with the websites, the Internet or anything else.

Take a guy who's inept at something, anything. Let's say fishing. He does not know how to attach the hook, that a bait can help or which bait is appropriate at the type of fish. He gets the idea to go fishing to impress his new girlfriend or whatever. He tells her he's going to bring home some nice fish.

Now let him at it for long enough time and after enough frustration you may notice a quickening of the heart, profuse sweating, and furious tossing around and bashing the equipment. In extreme cases, the ailment can be identified by loud screaming.

Does that mean we have a new "fishing syndrome"?

No, all it means is that the guy is overwhelmed, frustrated or whatever. Nothing a good rest, or a walk cannot fix. Maybe some food and a rest is really what he needs. Then someone showing him how to fish.

Maybe you are at work and you told your tough boss that You're The Man for the job, but you find there's something you don't understand and cannot get it right. As the deadline approaches and you're still fighting to get it done you may notice a quickening of the heart, profuse sweating, and furious tossing around and bashing the equipment. In extreme cases, the ailment can be identified by loud screaming.

These "syndromes" are nothing but another attempt to make you think you suffer from a syndrome of sorts, but fortunately it's nothing we can't fix with the right psychotropic drug treatment. Unfortunately a lot of people have bought into that pseudo science. Which mostly lines someones pockets.

Did you know that during the world war in Britain not a single case of insanity was reported? But somehow here we all suffer from something unheard of 50 years ago. And Somehow it can all be treated with some drug!?

Actually the content of handbook used for billing treatments is voted in. They don't scientifically discover some ailment but vote it in by popular vote. Yeah Mouse Rage Syndrome my foot!

Re:Web sites may have deleterious effects?

"Okay, what causes Developer Rage?"

Two words: Internet Explorer

Re:Web sites may have deleterious effects?

Well... this IE only site provided me with much enjoyment...

http://drafzal.com/old/ [drafzal.com].

You think this is a joke?

+5 Funny?

Whoever modded the parent funny has never tried to make a modern CSS-driven website that simultaneously worked correctly in IE5.x/win, IE6.x/win, and IE5.x/mac.

I am not kidding when I say that historically about 30% of my time is spent making a nice site layout and navigation tools that work correctly in all versions of Mozilla, Safari, and Opera 7.x+, while the remaining 70% of the development effort is spent trying to hack the code to render correctly in IE.

Lately I've finally given up on compatibility with IE5.x, it's just not worth the effort. Of course, there are still a fair number of users who then write in to complain that the site doesn't work for them.

Exciting/Depressing IE dev story

I'll give you a very depressing example. Everyone knows about the well-documented IE CSS bugs on Position is everything [positioniseverything.net]. A pain they are, but with sufficient hours of slaving away you can hack-around or workaround them, because they are known problems.

But nearly every project, I run into some mysterious *new* IE bug that takes hours to figure out. Here's my favorite example.

Circa 2004, I'm working on the site for Ecliptic Enterprises [eclipticenterprises.com] when I discover that the drop-down navigator menu doesn't work on all the pages. On the staff profile / resume pages, mousing over the menu does not cause it to drop down. It works on all the other pages.

But those menus are defined in an external file that is included on every page. So why would they work on some pages, but not the others? I check several times to make sure that the php code is rendering the menus identically on every page. diff confirms that the HTML, css, and javascript for the menus are 100% identical on all pages. So obviously (I think), some weird interaction with the page's content is breaking the javascript.

I begin systematically removing blocks of HTML trying to find what is breaking the menus on these specific pages. I remove each block, reload to see if the problem is fixed, diff the PHP outputs to check what I've done, replace the block, move on to the next block. I get to the end of the file and nothing has fixed the problem. So I try it over again from the beginning, removing code blocks and NOT replacing them before going on to the next.

After quite some time, I have stripped these pages down to zero content -- just the menus and other nav structure that is common to all pages. Yet the menus still won't function! I strip the remaining common parts of the page until there is nothing but a bare menu in my test file -- it still doesn't work! But the menus work happily on ~50 other pages on the site! About four hours have gone by.

By now I have so many copies of the page (dozens) that I am losing track of what I've tried in what order. profile_test001.php. profile_test002.php profile_whatthehellisgoingonhere.php. Eventually I copy the original page to an entirely different name to start anew. That copy, apparently identical to the original ... works just fine. I start to think I am losing my mind. I have been at this for five hours. I must have copied a different file than I thought. I try it again, using fresh copy of the file from backup. Menus don't work. I copy it to a different file name. Now the menus work. I really am losing my mind.

But no, after testing for an hour, I come to this bizarre, but inescapable conclusion:
if the filename of the webpage contains the string "profile", the drop-menus do not work in IE6. And no, the javascript does not examine the URL or any part of it in any way.

I rename all of the resume pages from "profile_.php" to "bio_.php". Suddenly the drop-menus on those pages work again in IE. My problem is fixed.

That's right, a sensitivity to the filename caused a javascript fault that broke my menus.

You can see it yourself, the files are still around. Boot up IE6, and visit the two following pages. They are bytewise identical, differing only in the filename. You can diff them to check:

http://www.eclipticenterprises.com/bio_ridenoure.p hp [eclipticenterprises.com] (menus work)
http://www.eclipticenterprises.com/profile_ridenou re2.php [eclipticenterprises.com] (menus break)

This bug, which I have never bothered to characterize further, cost me almost an entire workday. And in my experience, that kind of crap is absolutely typical of IE and has plagued me in every web project.

I haven't tested it in IE7. My windo

Re:Web sites may have deleterious effects?

It is crazy how every week someone releases another scientific finding after only running one experiment. The funnier part is how quickly the public is to line up and swallow the feces. Most of these so called "sound scientific reports" are badly planned experiments, well correlating observations, that don't really test for what they say they test. A good example would be the vaccination for cervical cancer, which is really a vaccination for a virus not the cancer. But hey John Q Public is first to sit at the table, put a bib on, and enjoy the big old pile of ....