The little details of the web


Sometimes it’s the little details in life that make your day. The same goes for the web. Unfortunately the attention to detail vanishes sometimes in most big websites.

youtube playlist browser

 

This is a screenshot from the playlist browser of YouTube in the “MyVideos” section of my account. On the left is the Firefox version and on the right it’s the Google Chrome version. The first annoyance is the scroll-bar. Why does this box have to be of a fixed size? Wouldn’t it be easier if I could just see all my playlists right away?

The second annoyance is that for some reason on Firefox YouTube is in English while in Google Chrome it’s in Greek. I happen to be a Greek guy living in Greece, so I guess it’s not that much of a trouble but I assume that YouTube will be in German if I visit Austria sometime in the future. This will be harder to deal with. Finally I can’t understand why in the English version I see my playlists sorted by date while in the Greek version they are sorted alphabetically.

Another example of a detail in the web is what I’ve done with Deskhot‘s login form. While initially it’s hidden so that new users can focus on the sign-up form right away, it’s not an annoyance for regular users. Normally your username and password are saved in the browser, so all you have to do is click the login button in the login form. When a user clicks on the login link the login form comes down. The login button is then placed in the same place where the login link was. So all you have to do is just click twice without moving your mouse.

login button placement