That "In case you're not aware, there's COVID-19 happening" banner isn't nearly tall nor yellow enough. Given a 6-inch-tall screen, the proper layout would be:
┍-------------------------------┑
|2" of vestigial COVID messaging|
┠-------------------------------┥
|1.5" of actual content |
┠-------------------------------┥
|2.5 of EU cookie banner |
┖-------------------------------┙
┍-------------------------------┑
|2" of COVID messaging |
┠-------------------------------┥
|1" of undismissable "our app |
| is gone; use the mobile site|
| that you're already on" |
┠-------------------------------┥
|0.5" of actual content |
┠-------------------------------┥
|2.5" of EU cookie banner, |
| despite being a US-only corp|
┖-------------------------------┙Loaded way too fast and is way to responsive.
Also when I checked NoScript, it's only loading js from lxe.github.io
I expect there to be at minimum 8 domains, but often 12-18.
All buttons and links need to shift around for a good 10 seconds before the page settles.
I was waiting for the overlay which hides the content until you turn off your ad blocker. Which of course is a trap because as soon as you do it covers the content in ads.
It also loaded too fast because it has no (ai-generated/3d/high color contrast) 10MB background image in the hero section
And needs some kind of loop that retries endlessly to make the AdBlock counter go brrr
The cookie thing, I assume it's EU-only, is an example of the EU policy making process being fundamentally broken in some way. If you create a flawed policy and don't fix it many years after it's very visibly obvious that it's a bad policy, something is really wrong.
it's an example of malicious compliance by some, and herd mentality by others.
I had a discussion with my CFO about removing the cookie banner from our website (because we don't set any tracking cookies, and cookies for things like login are exempted) and he said "yeah, but it makes the site seem less legitimate.
I'd say just remove it. Don't ask people who don't actually understand the cost of having it there because you will get the wrong answers. Sometimes people just have to do the right thing, take some heat and then everyone can move on. If it has severe consequences then that's probably a good reason to leave anyway.
Back in the day, this is how we introduced AWS at a large company. We just did it. And once done, they couldn't deny that it cost a fraction of what we were paying our supplier and that things took minutes to set up rather than weeks. And that they worked a lot better.
Yes, there was shouting in meeting rooms. And yes, people said "you can't do this". Turns out they were wrong. A few years later I mentioned this to Werner Vogels. During a meeting. Where my CEO and CTO were present. And where everyone was feeling very good about us being one of AWS' biggest customers in our region.
So when someone says "you can't do that", sometimes you should make them prove it.
(At the time AWS was a good idea. Today dependence on a US service provider is a harder sell in Europe. The _first_ question you get today is if we can host it ourselves if we need to or if we can use a local service provider.)
Many years ago, I used to make informational websites for small, local businesses and they all wanted the cookie banner "just to be safe", even after explaining they didn't need it.
You could have a 'no cookies' badge that links to your cookie policy - 'we use no tracking cookies and so are compliant with EU law ... then list any cookies/local-storage used and explain what they're for.
But then you can't have tracking cookies.
Best we can do is a full screen model or annoying toast telling users we dont use cookies and click 4 to 7 check boxes to agree.
That reasoning isn't wrong, though it seems ridiculous when looked at with techie-brain. But if there is a standard expectation of what serious company websites are like, it makes business sense to look like that too. It's like dressing up appropriately to cultural expectations. You can deviate somewhat but you have to strategically spend your weirdness points.
How nice of the EU to have determined for the rest of the world that the “cultural expectation” should be that every business do the design equivalent of wearing clown makeup.
I don't care about this. I explained why for an individual business trying to project seriousness, it makes sense to adopt a banner in the current environment. I didn't say it's nice of the EU or anything of the sort. It's an incentive pressure that exists on an individual company in the current situation. That's all I said.
I have had the same discussion multiple times at multiple companies. Luckily most of them were fine with dismissing the popup with a timer.
Reminds me of the early days of the CANSPAM act.
One of the best indicators that something was not spam was the unsubscribe button.
The EU said "you have to ask for permission before forcefully sodomizing your users", and webdevs thought "let's ask for permission" rather than "let's not forcefully sodomize our users". Of course, the law could have said "don't forcefully sodomize users", but it seems the west is still under the impression that some people will do the right thing, just because, sometimes. (maybe 20 years ago they would have, just because, sometimes, but they won't now)
The EU said “we can’t do anything to actually improve lives for our citizens so let’s make a big show of sticking it to tech companies but not in a way that’s actually effective like browser level preferences just in a way that everyone notices but has no impact on businesses”
Not web devs per se, I’d be hard pressed to find a serious web dev who wanted to “forcefully sodomize users”. Thats a management thing
"No."
If every webdev who would say no can be trivially replaced by webdevs who won't say no, then yes, it is webdevs.
It's silly to blame the individual who doesn't have the authority or power at the business making these choices.
Actually cookies are not mandated by the EU, but this was the solution the big companies agreed on and now Google and Co try to lobby against better solutions.
Check out: https://killthecookiebanner.eu/
I see a lot of people below arguing that this isn’t the fault of the EU policy but the companies. I think that’s being overly charitable to the policy. While you can be rightly upset with the companies behavior, ultimately policy has to work with the incentives it creates. The policy in its current form allows for meeting requirements with annoying cookie banner opt-outs while keeping the lucrative business of tracking. If we don’t want that, the policy should be changed. Don’t expect companies to go against their interests here, even if some will actually be thoughtful and find a way to do so. The “Purpose Of a System Is What It Does” principle applies, and the purpose of the EU policy seems to be cookie banners for most sites.
Actually the purpose was not to invade our privacy as much, which we do and there is active lobbying (for example by Google) against any better solution: https://noyb.eu/en/eu-member-states-and-google-suddenly-want...
Nah fuck the companies and their horse shit.
99% percent of them intentionally turn the "decline" choice into a 5 - 10 step game of dark patterns even though the EU policy says it should be equally easy to decline. They know its bullshit but they also know the chance that someone will drag them through court is low.
I’ve long believed that making companies liable for paying damages if PII is leaked in a data breach would be the best way to stop excessive tracking. If you force them to have to manage user data like they’re handling radioactive waste then the expense and overhead involved is a natural drag on the business logic that drives the bottomless appetite for data collection. They’ll collect it if they actually need it, and they’ll take great pains to secure it.
Policy making assumed good faith actors - specifically that tracking outside of necessary for website to function to be minimal. Because like…not necessary.
It’s only broken to the extent that it collided with a messed up world where websites track even when they don’t need to and then send that to 2000 partners for more profit extraction on top of what the website does commercially.
Something is deeply fucked up there and it’s not the EU part. They just make a good scapegoat because the banner is what users see
> Policy making assumed good faith actors
Let's not paint the policymakers naïve when they're in fact incompetent.
Most US sites are giving the cookie bag to US users. It may simply be easier for leadership to say add the widget than it is to say we won’t accept traffic from the EU or risk the consequences
It feels similar to how CA environmental regs become the national standard simply because the market is so large it’s not worth splitting on it. So they just slap a cancer warning on everything
Do Not Track was the right implementation (browser-based, activate only once) and it was sabotaged by ad peddlers. It is bad policy that has been reached after every better alternative was rejected.
I have yet to see an actual part of that policy which requires a cookie banner though. Seems more to me that it's a combination of (a) websites allowing all kind of fcked up use cases of cookies on their site (most sites do not even need cookies for real) and (b) not respecting http headers that ask to not be tracked... They much rather have a very confusing popup that kinda forces you to accept all :) How convenient.
Just like websites also give zero fcks about accept-language header... sure do geoip lookup, so much easier... not
I have always seen the cookie banner as a sort of punishment to the public for daring to have demanded better treatment.
“Oh you want consent involved in this interaction? Then we’ll annoy you about it constantly instead of respecting the intent of the regulation.”
The most used banners at least have a quick way of dismissing without opting in. When the cases against too obvious dark patterns started that fixed itself at least.
Bullshit. There’s no need to track every visitor. Just stop tracking and you don’t need a cookie banner.
The only mistake EU policymakers made was underestimating how willing companies were to deface their websites.
"Every time you visit the websites managed by the European Commission, you will be prompted to accept or refuse cookies." https://european-union.europa.eu/cookies_en
The policy is both, good, but also flawed. For example, you cannot persist settings, because one policy says that website settings should be ephemeral unless user agrees to persist them.
That shows the same fundamental misunderstanding of the modern web that led to the ignorance of EU regulations.
It’s an EU law, but it impacts us all in America as well… because you know, every fucking website
It is not an EU law. Nowhere in GDPR are cookie banners mandated.
Actually big tech is to blame: https://killthecookiebanner.eu/
The cookie disaster is thanks to the ePrivacy Directive, which came before GDPR:
- https://www.edps.europa.eu/data-protection/our-work/subjects...
Again we could have settled on privacy compliant tracking without cookies, which is possible or use browser preferences and respect those (which would be perfectly legal)
As feedback, you made that popup way too clean and easy to close. That’s not how it works in reality. You need to make the background transparent and the X so small it’s technically impossible to hit. Also think about adding an ad and a timer and move the popup slightly after N ms so that the user always hits the ad.
I made a game about this. You can play it if you want to feel annoyed.
So many websites do popups and it feels so anti-user. Maybe I get unusually annoyed, but I do not need a Gemini popup ad in Google Docs. Just let me do what I came to the website to do!
But you could obviously be doing it faster/smarter by using Gemini /s
Needs to autoplay a video which when dismissed just moves to another window and continues playing. With sound.
and hijack your clipboard and back button
And you can’t dismiss it because the X is somehow hidden behind another popup
Needs a Google login popup, required for any site that there is no reason at all to have an account with.
Or even better, something that pretends to be a real "Sign in with Google" button but instead phishes your username and password.
It should appear a second after the page seems to have finished loading, so that it hijacks the input if the user is navigating with the keyboard or typing something into a form.
Yea but do you guys remember when we actually needed pop up blockers to avoid having a site spawn like 10 new windows behind the current one, and tabs didn’t really exist yet, and the popups had adult content and sometimes they autoplayed sound/video? Like, internet explorer 6 era? Sometimes I miss those days
it's funny sometimes there will be an archived espn.com (like this https://proxy.espn.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/030418) and it's hard to argue the web was not better like this, i.e. readable
inaccurate, i don't have to go three screens deep into a modal to choose only necessary cookies
The best one now is “Read for free” (give me all the trackers) or join a subscription and you can opt out. Pretty much every news / media site now
That one is honest at least, makes you aware that you're the product.
If it's going to be every website, it might as well be about pipes.
(shameless plug)
It's a bit 2025. Needs a scroll hijack background animation and cursor effects to be up to date for 2026
Needs more jank from a bajillion ads loading. :D Kidding aside, this is hilarious and made my morning
Every paragraph (maybe sentence) needs to fade in as I attempt to scroll. If I can read the first paragraph easily when the page loads (ignoring the pop-ups) then the website is too well designed.
Even my back button was hijacked for a second. Nice attention to detail!
Bootstrap, what a blast from the past! They just don't make bad websites like they used to.
I kinda miss the CSS bootstrap aesthetic.
No endless scroll? What the hell am I supposed do I do with my mouse wheel?? Useless!
Needs a scroll that becomes a full page ad that when you scroll pass becomes the same ad but 1/3rd the page
Don't give them ideas... LoL
That is already deployed to real web sites.
It needs to present a happy moose to you if you don't use an adblocker
Damn, yeah this is exactly how I make my websites look.
I wasn't asked for my location, notifications, camera permissions or to log in. This is, regrettably, still better than most recipe websites I visit.
Needs the floating video thumbnail with auto-play and sound. Also the requests for location and permission to send notifications dialogs in chrome!
Every Fucking Website not created by Claude. Otherwise it would have a dark gray background with transparant rounded buttons with a neon border.
This is perfect.
it’s missing spinners for 5-10 seconds while it loads endless megabytes of javascript doing who knows what.
Seriously how did we get to this point? I remember growing up in the 2000’s and all the marketing about computers was “it’s fast!” and “get results instantly!” that kind of thing. Now everything it gated by multiple spinners, then it loads a skeleton, then it partially loads your actual content, then, when you go to click on something, more content loads and the existing content jumps to a new place and you end up clicking on something else, meaning now you have to go back (if they haven’t hijacked the back button), wait for it all to load again, wait for the second “real” load, and then click on what you actually meant to click on in the first place.
There are more creative ones. Check out https://shellbox.dev
Also on iPhones Twitter appears to have aligned their privacy reject button with where their open in app overlay appears just a second later so that you hit that instead.
Too many people working on evil dark pattern bullshit
Really needs a 20MB video playing in the background of the hero.
with an ad overlayed that won't go away
For my current project, I tried going with a non-traditional style I personally liked, I call it "Soft Neo Brutalism". You can see it at: http://www.frost-e.com
I generally wanted web 1.0 simplicity, lots of contrast, but also a soft gentle colours and modern vibe. I also have a general design for use in dashboards/apps etc: https://frost-e.com/design-system/
No agents.md?
missing carousel
Just a quick reminder that you don't need to put up any cookie banners at all if you simply don't track your users in a privacy-invading way.
Trump 2020! I hate puppies!
This is actually good boilerplate. lol
Cookie banners are malicious compliance. There are only 1-2 EU countries with quarrelsome predatory lawyers proactively scanning the web.
The positives about covid and AI is that we don't hear anymore about blockchain and crypto (well, except one boomer oligarch holding onto it). Just please make the next two big things happen already for God's sake.
Because it fucking works
(AIUI "I agree" gets people to give explicit consent with good success and the subscribe modals are quite effective too)
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It also needs to scroll in after a second or two, and shift the page content down, so you mis-click the wrong link, and end up loading something that takes forever to load and somehow manages to cause the back button to misbehave.