Microsoft: Fails at Web Design with Live Earth | The Coffeehouse

Michael Griffiths
Fatalism.

Microsoft - or, specifically, MSN - seem to have taken a leap backwards into the Dark Ages for their exclusive coverage of Live Earth.

If you've looked at the main site for Live Earth; it's confusing, busy, ugly, and hard to navigate.

1) The header - all useless logos, brands, and so on - is 187 pixels. That's almost 20% of my entire screen.
2) There isn't a link to the main schedule (here) on the main page. You either have to (1) go into the About Page and then click on the entirely unintuitive "Live Earth Fact Sheet" which is in tiny, 12 pt Tahoma at the bottom of the "Press Releases and Fact Sheets" page. Or (2) you can just fo to MSN.com, where they have a slightly more obvious link to "Full Schedule for Live Earth."
3) There's a lot of advertising masquerading as "information." It's hard to discern what's real and what ...isn't.
4) You have to go to an entirely different site to watch the concerts. Wow. I mean, wow.
5) That site sucks, too. It has a completely different design from MSN Video or MSN Soapbox. It's like an internet video player from 4 years ago.
6) It's in Flash. OK, but... you can't double click to get full screen. Oh, wait, there's an icon to full screen.... no! In fact, it doesn't full screen! It just expands to the size of the 800x600px box that masquerades as the entire page! But no... you can full screen. If you right-click. And it's just does a YouTube-expand-to-browser-window. Yeah, that's cinematic.
7) It's in a what, 250x400px itty-bitty window unless you full screen? Yeah, nice.
8) The video site doesn't even work in anything other than Internet Explorer. Oooh, web-friendly! You can "sort-of"watch the videos in Firefox, but only by coutry. WTF? And it's using the QuickTime plugin? Excuse me? Is this just my installation of QuickTime or is Microsoft defaulting to using Quicktime in Firefox, even when I have (1) Flash and (2) Windows Media Player plugins installed? Huh?

And I can't say I've been impressed by the stability of the stream.

So we have:

I. A bad video experience in IE.
II. A worse (god forbid) experience in every other web browser.

Why didn't they just use the video.msn.com site/tech for this? I mean, that works in Firefox with WMP. And it looks nicer (I wasn't sure that was possible).

Anyone else similarly disgusted?

k2t0f12d
The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society

LMMFAO!!!!!

mcampbell

A review so in-depth and critical for yet something so pointless.

MB

Like... Who gives a sh1t ?

rjdohnert
You will never know success until you know failure

Michael Griffiths and nobody else. Just for the record I havent had any problems with the site and actually like the design.

MB wrote:
Like... Who gives a sh1t ?

corona_coder
Only Proprietary software vendors deal in absolutes.

rjdohnert wrote:
Michael Griffiths and nobody else. Just for the record I havent had any problems with the site and actually like the design.

This coming from a person whose site looks like it was designed by a four year old and who trolls C9 forums with his ridiculous blog.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

Dylan C wrote:
Everyone should stop bashing Microsoft and start praising them for all the good that they have done.

What "good"?

The philanthropy is Bill Gate's responsibility, not Microsoft. Whilst Microsoft provided the web with free satelite and aerial photography (Terraserver, it was actually a glorified tech-demo for SQL Server aparently) they didn't do much to populize it or give it a good user-experience, so Google kicked their arsé.

Windows Live Local is better and actually provides a better experience than GMaps now, but the damage has been done.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

Dylan C wrote:

W3bbo wrote:
Dylan C wrote:Everyone should stop bashing Microsoft and start praising them for all the good that they have done.

What "good"?

Lets see.....

Windows
Visual Studio
.NET
Windows Mobile
Xbox
...the list goes on.

If their products don't meet your standards...why are using them?

Windows, plauged with security problems until Microsoft's "Trustworthy computing initative", strong competition from MacOSX and Linux. It can be argued it's only popular because of the ecosystem.
Visual Studio is a very nice product
.NET, if you're refering to the CLR is also a very nice product, but I'm of the persuation practically all of it is stolen from Java
Windows Mobile has issues I'm not happy with, use the forum search engine to find my various long lists of complaints
The Xbox initially never sold as well as expected, it was essentially a modified x86 box in an oversized black case. The Xbox 360 is an improvement, but you'll notice they just issued a $1Bn warranty scheme because of the Ring of Light errors practically everyone's getting. The Xbox and Xbox 360 are by no means perfect products. The Wii has a more innovative and immersive control system, for example. (But yeah, the PS3 is a POS).

Microsoft, as a corporation, is ultimately profit-driven. They only make good high-quality products if there's a business case for it. Not much point making lesser-used features work well if it isn't a selling point, hence my issues with Windows Mobile. Compare to Apple, they're perfectionists, which explain the high price-tags.

jamie

my bet is that their current design firm has been employed with them for a while / complaicent

- also there is a chance it was semi rush - and was given to just anyone that could get it out

- perhaps the original designers who landed MS as client - are off wooing other clients/building business and 2nd tier people are working on it

- perhaps many good designs were in fact submitted - but the safest design was chosen by the comittee - then- corporate -ized where the original design loses its focus and the designer loses interest - just get it over with /done

there are lots of reasons for bad design ... it does seem like apples design firm has there office in apple...next to steves.

MB

W3bbo wrote:
Compare to Apple, they're perfectionists, which explain the high price-tags.

LOL... Obviously a wind-up.

You could come up with any number of reasons for Apple's pricing, but "they're perfectionists" is not one of them.

Michael Griffiths
Fatalism.

jamie wrote:

my bet is that their current design firm has been employed with them for a while / complaicent

- also there is a chance it was semi rush - and was given to just anyone that could get it out

- perhaps the original designers who landed MS as client - are off wooing other clients/building business and 2nd tier people are working on it

- perhaps many good designs were in fact submitted - but the safest design was chosen by the comittee - then- corporate -ized where the original design loses its focus and the designer loses interest - just get it over with /done

there are lots of reasons for bad design ... it does seem like apples design firm has there office in apple...next to steves.

Oh, the entire experience looks like it was designed by committee, with multiple iterations. And then implemented quickly, cutting corners everywhere.

It has a pretty nice feature set (live play, on-demand play, lots of links to help out, and so on). Overall, the entire site is pretty good - just seriously held back by it's design.

Indeed, they're even getting praise.

The main problems looks to be:

1) It was designed for the masses; and within that the lowest common denominator. So you have 800x600 and using Flash.
2) Full support only in IE due to time constraints.
3) Weak design partially due to the need to give prominent space to sponsors. Actually, sponsors look to be the number 1 priority for the team.
4) Because they expected the site to be popular, it needs to be small, dynamic, and scalable. So they can't leverage an existing site.
5) Because it's temporary, they can't justify a huge amount of funding/testing/etc.

Initial design: good.
Iteration 1: "We need space for our sponsors."
Iteration 2: "Good, but we need more space for the ads."
Iteration 3: "Nice, but there aren't enough links for people to help out. Add that. The whole social thing is big these days."
Iteration 4: "Looking solid. Let's see how well it does... hey, guys, performance sucks. Fix it."

etc.

Sadly, that means we've got a mediocre design that works, but makes MSN look like a third-rate internet site; as opposed to a cutting-edge, modern site.

fatmonkey

I'm on the team that built the Live Earth site and video player. You're right that we had to balance the requirements of lots of internal groups, our partners and advertisers. Would we like to build sites with no ads? Absolutely? Does that run a business? No.

Did we have to design for the masses? Yes. We had a very small team and we would have loved to build a cool Web 2.0 site. But we didn't build it for the geeks or try to be 'web 2.0' cool. We focused on our primary audience i.e. music & entertainment fans. And yesterday we delivered over 10 million video streams in a single day, which makes Internet broadcasting history.

And why didn't we use Flash? Please do your homework and learn the difference between live & on-demand video on the web. Show me one site that has ever done LIVE Flash. It just isn't ready .That's why we did QuickTime (in addition Windows Media) for live. We really tried not to exclude anyone from watching the show. And today we switched to on-demand with Windows Media and Flash and we're delivering the same video experience in IE, Firefox and Safari and on Windows and OSX.

So I'm sorry that we didn't design a "cutting-edge, modern site" that would have made you happier. We designed and delivered for a mass audience that will generate literally 100's of millions of hits.

So thanks for the feedback. When you go out and deliver on a site and video experience even remotely close to this, then please come back and I may actually take your advice seriously. Smiley

Rossj

fatmonkey wrote:
That's why we did QuickTime (in addition Windows Media) for live.

Might I ask what was used as the streaming server?

bullitracer

Wow...I didn't know they let lawn dart accident victims post here Mr. Griffiths.

We thought seriously about doing a much cooler site…but then we figured out it wouldn’t be ready until 8/7, and only you sir would get to see the perfect Web 2.0 site result. You would have thought it was sweet though. Lots of big text for you so you could still see it all around that dart in your head.

By the way if you double click on the “normal” MSN video player it also doesn’t do full screen…or anything. Try it.

We pause in the Live Earth player on single click…since we know our audience patterns. It’s people at work watching and needing to pause video quick for an interruption at their PC or when the boss walks in. Honest people can get paying jobs that don’t have lawn darts in their heads. Try it out….pull…pull…you almost have it Mr. Griffiths….pull again….

Try out the on-demand My Faves feature Monday and we’d love to get some serious feedback about our browser coverage and feature set.

http://liveearth.msn.com/le/video

By the way….if you want to see a poorly built site I would say the 787 rollout video web experience is more deserving of your attention sir.

http://787premiere.newairplane.com/

Cool plane, crappy site…maybe it was just the 7/8/07 date that was hard to hit.

They could have delayed the plane launch until the site was perfect I suppose….I’m sure those airplane customers would have preferred that too.

-Bullitracer

blowdart
Peek-a-boo

bullitracer wrote:

Wow...I didn't know they let lawn dart accident victims post here Mr. Griffiths.

We thought seriously about doing a much cooler site…but then we figured out it wouldn’t be ready until 8/7, and only you sir would get to see the perfect Web 2.0 site result. You would have thought it was sweet though. Lots of big text for you so you could still see it all around that dart in your head.

By the way if you double click on the “normal” MSN video player it also doesn’t do full screen…or anything. Try it.

We pause in the Live Earth player on single click…since we know our audience patterns. It’s people at work watching and needing to pause video quick for an interruption at their PC or when the boss walks in. Honest people can get paying jobs that don’t have lawn darts in their heads. Try it out….pull…pull…you almost have it Mr. Griffiths….pull again….

Try out the on-demand My Faves feature Monday and we’d love to get some serious feedback about our browser coverage and feature set.

http://liveearth.msn.com/le/video

By the way….if you want to see a poorly built site I would say the 787 rollout video web experience is more deserving of your attention sir.

http://787premiere.newairplane.com/

Cool plane, crappy site…maybe it was just the 7/8/07 date that was hard to hit.

They could have delayed the plane launch until the site was perfect I suppose….I’m sure those airplane customers would have preferred that too.

-Bullitracer

Hands up who believes this a Microsoft employee?

If you do, was this the attitude you were expecting? Snide comments about a posters mental and employment status?

Oh dear. Any of our dear C9 team like to see if this really was from an employee? And if so issue the lart to their PM?

Rossj

blowdart wrote:

Hands up who believes this a Microsoft employee?

If you do, was this the attitude you were expecting? Snide comments about a posters mental and employment status?

Oh dear. Any of our dear C9 team like to see if this really was from an employee? And if so issue the lart to their PM?

Probably sent from home and anonymously Perplexed

I can understand that the constant criticism, some of it justified much of it not, can be a drain and need some form of release - but if they really are Microsoft employees then this really isn't the way to blow off steam.

ScanIAm
On a scale of 1 to 10, people are stupid.

Rossj wrote:

blowdart wrote:
Hands up who believes this a Microsoft employee?

If you do, was this the attitude you were expecting? Snide comments about a posters mental and employment status?

Oh dear. Any of our dear C9 team like to see if this really was from an employee? And if so issue the lart to their PM?

Probably sent from home and anonymously

I can understand that the constant criticism, some of it justified much of it not, can be a drain and need some form of release - but if they really are Microsoft employees then this really isn't the way to blow off steam.

Nah, this is just design monkeys having a pissing contest amongst each other. Ooooooh, the 787 website sucks. Give me a frikking break.

littleguru
<3 Seattle

W3bbo wrote:
...but I'm of the persuation practically all of it is stolen from Java

I can only LOL on this - so untrue... You need to back this up!

.NET is so not stolen from JAVA. It has its roots in COM and VB (which has also its roots in COM). And only because both have a virtual machine it dosn't make one stolen from the other or whatever. JAVA wasn't the first thing running on a VM!

Michael Griffiths
Fatalism.

blowdart wrote:

Hands up who believes this a Microsoft employee?

If you do, was this the attitude you were expecting? Snide comments about a posters mental and employment status?

Oh dear. Any of our dear C9 team like to see if this really was from an employee? And if so issue the lart to their PM?

I'm certainly suprised Tongue Out

Lawn darts in my head? Oh dear.

Rossj

littleguru wrote:

W3bbo wrote:...but I'm of the persuation practically all of it is stolen from Java

I can only LOL on this - so untrue... You need to back this up!

.NET is so not stolen from JAVA. It has its roots in COM and VB (which has also its roots in COM). And only because both have a virtual machine it dosn't make one stolen from the other or whatever. JAVA wasn't the first thing running on a VM!

Of course there were VMs before Java, but it is hard not to think that C# came out of the Microsoft Java VM, and the similarities in syntax mean that when I switched to .Net after 6 years of Java (.Net 1.0) it took *no* time at all to work out what was going on. Not definitive evidence of course other than vague recollections of P/Invoke like syntax in the JVM (anyone remember what it was called), and similarities in performance.

It wouldn't be a stretch that Microsoft replaced Java bytecode with IL and made a few changes ...

Duncanma
Just Coding for Fun...

Michael Griffiths wrote:
Lawn darts in my head? Oh dear.

Hey folks... I'm certainly not impressed with the answers from the two Microsoft employees in this thread. Suffice it say that there are people everywhere, internal to Microsoft and out, that don't know how to have a polite conversation.

It is hard to respond politely to strong negative comments about your work, but it isn't like they had to respond. Personally, if I had to choose between posting comments like fatmonkey and bullitracer did and saying nothing at all, I'd go with nothing.

I would like to say that I am very happy to see that several of you automatically assumed that they weren't Microsoft employees... even if it then makes me all the more embarrased that they are.

On the original topic though, I'm not sure why defaulting to QuickTime in FireFox is so bad... to use the WMP plug-in by default would seem very odd, since you'd need to turn around and use QuickTime again for FireFox users on the Mac. We go with QT for FireFox by default on http://on10.net and I thought it was a pretty good way to go for a Microsoft site. At some point we'll swap in a Silverlight player, which will then allow us to output the same player for IE and FireFox (Mac/PC), but for now we are going with WMP in IE and QT in FireFox. On this site though, I know that we output nothing for FireFox, should we output an object tag for use with the WMP plug-in?

Michael Griffiths
Fatalism.

Duncanma wrote:

Hey folks... I'm certainly not impressed with the answers from the two Microsoft employees in this thread. Suffice it say that there are people everywhere, internal to Microsoft and out, that don't know how to have a polite conversation.

It is hard to respond politely to strong negative comments about your work, but it isn't like they had to respond. Personally, if I had to choose between posting comments like fatmonkey and bullitracer did and saying nothing at all, I'd go with nothing.

I hadn't expected a response from anyone inside Microsoft. The post was irritated enough not to warrant one - I'd just spent a very frustrating 10 minutes navigating the Live Earth site (6 of those trying to find the schedule) and wasn't very happy; so I spent 5 minutes writing an irritated post.

The first responder (fatmonkey) was good, though he confused complaints with advice, and committed the fallacy in thinking that being good at doing something makes you good at criticising something. It certainly gives more background, but (for example) writing doesn't make you an editor, or vice versa.

Duncanma wrote:

On the original topic though, I'm not sure why defaulting to QuickTime in FireFox is so bad... to use the WMP plug-in by default would seem very odd, since you'd need to turn around and use QuickTime again for FireFox users on the Mac. We go with QT for FireFox by default on http://on10.net and I thought it was a pretty good way to go for a Microsoft site. At some point we'll swap in a Silverlight player, which will then allow us to output the same player for IE and FireFox (Mac/PC), but for now we are going with WMP in IE and QT in FireFox. On this site though, I know that we output nothing for FireFox, should we output an object tag for use with the WMP plug-in?

Good point; hadn't thought about that.

I like the WMP plugin only because it provides a very easy full-screen experience, and I only view videos online I want to watch fullscreen (movie trailers, and so on). I've noticed you can use IE7s Zoom feature to zoom into most Flash objects, and expand them - which is a killer feature for me.

My problem with the LiveEarth (still) is that it's not a consistent experience. Why is there one page for IE, and then a landing page with sub-pages for Firefox and so on?

If they're using Flash and Quicktime - both widely deployed in Firefox and IE - it doesn't make sense to have seperate sites. There shouldn't be any technical reason.

It also really bugs me when sites hard-code to a certain browser resolution. When you have a large monitor, it doesn't look so good.

Now, the site is better that when I first ran into it - same experience cross-browser - so a decent chunk of my problems with it go away (though it changes your browser window to the page size. Fun).

bullitracer

So the lawn dart comment was inappropriate and I apologize sir.

There is a vast difference between streaming live video to 10million people versus normal video on demand seen in more common cases.

We offered a mass world wide audience many options to enjoy the content, but we did have to focus on the most common user scenarios given the date driven event.

For on demand we cover the major browser platforms uniformly and appreciate any feedback you might have on features.

Shining Arcanine

mcampbell wrote:
A review so in-depth and critical for yet something so pointless.

I agree.

Charles
Welcome Change

If you trash somebody's work, then they have the right to get defensive. On the other hand, being respectful is the order of the day, as we have always preached around here.

Play nice,

C