Forbes seems to have discovered the very cutting edge of web unusability. Check out the following page:
In Pictures: Google + Apple = ?
I saw this in my Gmail (as a web clip) and clicked through to find the most ridiculous concept in web browsing: an auto-refreshing slideshow that consists of entire-page reloads every 15 seconds with no user input.
Instead of having the decency to split a normal article up into 4 parts (like the New York Times does to inflate their pageview count), they split this slideshow up into 9 “slides”. Each slide is its very own bloated page with a new photo, a few blocks of text, and a whole lot of ads.
Forbes assumes they know your optimal reading spead better than you do and refreshes to the next slide every 15,000 milliseconds. Often times a page and its ads actually take longer to load than the refresh interval so you get to play a fun little game of “try to catch the first sentence”.
The slideshow controls are tiny and get lost in the visual cacophony of the page, but you better learn where they are because your browser’s “Stop” function doesn’t actually work to stop these pages from reloading every 15 seconds.
Since I’ve started writing this piece, the site has reloaded over 20 times and has eaten up over 10MB worth of bandwidth (according to firebug).
Now some of you astute readers might be asking, “wait, 20 times? Didn’t you say there were only 9 slides?” You see Forbes assumes that you liked the ride so much that it doesn’t just stop at the end of the current slideshow – it just keeps going with any other stories it has in the ‘ole merrygoround – The Web Celeb 25 (27 slides worth), Hottest Cellphones 2006, and on and on until you are driven completely insane, your computer crashes, or Forbes run out of ads (the least likely scenario).
After a little while I noticed that there is a 1-page version of this story that you can click to. So I did. And I got this page:
The page was mocking my previous agony by telling me that “The worst is yet to come!”. After this page was done advertising to me it replaced the slideshow-from-hell version of the article with the find-the-actual-article version of the article.
The Hyperion man throws a blackberry in your face and if you happen to find the tiny [close x] button, he turns into a ghost and keeps walking around his ad staring at you while he drinks his coffee. Taunting you. It’s really quite surreal.
I’m just so amazed that a website for such a known brand could be so ridiculously out of touch with any basic concept of usability? Who the hell is responsible for this monstrosity? How can the old-paper dinosaurs expect to compete on the new web with something like this? And why the hell is this page still under their domain? (Yes, I have to put a link condom on it).
So for all the reasons above, Forbes.com wins the first (and last) annual “World Wide Web’s Worst Usability Award” presented by AU Interactive. Steve, you can email me to find out where to pick up the prize.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
P.S. We are coincidentally in the running for the 2007 “Best Alliteration in Fictitious Prize Names” award.
Well written.
I had plenty of trouble with this ‘widget’ in the past, when checking out the list of the world’s richest people. After #5 or so, I closed my browser and promised myself never to visit Forbes.com again.
As for the invasive ads – I have a personal policy of boycotting any site that puts distractions/barriers between me and their content. They are essentially saying that they care more about their advertising dollars than the reader who keeps them in business (and as a result attractive to advertisers). I will usually boycott the advertiser as well. I don’t mind banner/skyscraper/text ads, but anything that blocks what I am reading, or plays audio, gets explicity blocked by me.
I noticed that this seems particularly bad when one clicks through from Gmail. Forbes seems to have no understanding of the internet whatsoever. This is also evident from reading their frumpy-ass magazine.
I had similar issues a while back with a video they linked to, incidentaly also via a web clip at the top of Gmail. http://giania.livejournal.com/135416.html
I got snookered into their infuriating farce of a website due to a link I clicked out of mild curiosity and spent the next half hour marvelling at their utter gall.
I fully support your nomination, and would be willing to assist in the creation of a physical or digital award which Forbes can be formally presented with!
Possibly the worst web page in the world. I hardly dared to look at the others.
Amen and amen, Markus.
Forbes.com, you make my brain hurt.
This may or may not be the Forbes web teams fault. This appears to me to be the product of the web team suggesting one thing, the marketing/advertising team saying “We need these ads” and the user experience champion sitting back and not doing anything or having their hands tied and not being able to do anything.
These big media vendors need to figure out that this overload of advertising is not the future of the web. The future will be, if advertising still exists aside from a sole subscription model, is that there will be only one ad, which will cost advertisers a TON as it will be the only competition for the users attention on a page. This kind of mishmash nightmare will go the way of the dinosaur very shortly.
Ha ha… Bad advertising is not the answer. A good laugh, a good click away of the Forbes site… forever….