I was reading in the news the birth of www.qwant.com, a new French search engine. So I said to myself "ok, let's go and have a look." I was in my bath with my iPhone. First impression isn't very good since the website doesn't have a mobile template so you have to zoom in and out to read anything. So I launch my first search and zoom in to read the results. And then, some piece of JavaScript overlays huge column headers on top of my screen - covering 100% of the screen. I can't see the page anymore.

So here is my first impression: it is broken. It's just that the website is not usable with a phone. They have column headers that "float" on top of the page whenever you scroll down and whenever you zoom in, they take up 100% of the screen so nothing works. At all. You cannot even see the search results. Note that it doesn't work at all on Android or anything else with a small screen. Granted, with big-screen Android phones (think the 1280x720 variety), it is just clunky and somewhat usable since you don't have to zoom as widely as with a smaller screen phone.

This is in my opinion the exact opposite of what a website should be about. I mean, what value are you bringing if users cannot see your website?

The column headers that overlap the entire display does bring minimal value to desktop users and annoy phone users to the point of having your entire website useless. Why have them?

Responses[1]

Posted by pieroxy on February 16, 2013 4:33:00 AM PST #