5 Common Usability Mistakes and Solutions For Avoiding Them

I'm sort of a grumpy web user, but I think that's part of what drives me to be a good Web Developer.  I get so annoyed at things that make using a website difficult, things that should be basic.  Here's a list of five common usability mistakes and solutions for avoiding them.  Do yourself and your users a favor and make sure you aren't breaking any of these rules.

Use submit Instead of click Events; Use <Form> Tags!

I can't tell you the number of times I've tried to submit a (perceived) form with the ENTER key (or mobile arrow/enter key) and watched absolutely nothing happen.  I then click or tap the submit button and the form finally does something.  This is my single biggest usability peeve and a sure sign of amateur hour.  Tabbing to the submit button and closing the mobile keyboard and scrolling to the submit button are incredibly annoying extra steps that don't need to exist.  Simply use submit like you should and we'll be friends again:

document.getElementById("myForm").addEventListener("submit", function(e) {
	e.preventDefault();
	
	// ... Do processing here.  Yay for "enter" key submission!

	return false;
});

If you're committing this atrocity anywhere, please fix it immediately.  Sincerely, every kitten that's died due to your sins.

Click Events:  Don't Prevent When [CONTROL] or [META] is also pressed

I'm a serial new-tab-opener and while I've been recently looking for a new house, I've been looking at listing websites.  I'll get to a list page and command-click a few houses I'd like to view photos of, only to get redirected to a page in the same tab;  victim of a click listener and a window.location change.  Horrible.  Before you preventDefault on any link, be sure to check for meta and control properties:

document.getElementById("myLink").addEventListener("click", function(e) {
	// e.preventDefault();  (bad)

	if(e.meta || e.ctrlKey) return; // Don't block user if they want to open a new tab
	e.preventDefault();
});

I currently make this check on this blog so that users can open new tabs without issue.  Don't make your users play the click-back-click-back game on your site!

Add Title Attributes To Elements with text-overflow: ellipsis

The (somewhat) new CSS text-overflow: ellipsis property and value are awesome.  Developers used to go through hell trying to duplicate this effect.  I'm all for using text-overflow: ellipsis, but if I hover over an element that utilizes this, you better throw a title attribute on it so I can quickly see the entire text:

<div class="ellipsizeMe" title="I am some really, really long text that's going to be ellipsized">
I am some really, really long text that's going to be ellipsized
</div>

If you don't want to output the content twice, you can use JS to set the title dynamically.  Whatever you do...please hook your users up.

Don't forget :focus and :active!

Too many people forget these states when styling elements, assuming the user has a mouse -- bad form.  Use the :focus and :active states too:

a:hover, a:active, a:focus { /* change _all_ the pseudos! */
	color: #900;
}

Do yourself a favor:  next time you create a site, tab all the way through the page;  if you hit tab and have no idea what got focus, check out your stylesheet and see if you forgot to add one of these states!

Use Input type search / email

When I'm trying to complete the hell that is a form on a mobile device, I get incredibly frustrated when I have to swap between keyboard screens to get to a "@".  Be a grownup and use the correct input type:

<input type="search" value="" />

<input type="email" value="" />

One quick update, huge usability boost for your mobile users.

There are hundreds of common usability mistakes a developer can make, so expect more of these posts in the future.  The promising thing is that most usability issues are very simple to correct, as you probably noticed above.  Let me know if you have usability faux pas and solutions you'd like to make people aware of, and I'll compile another post sharing them!