[username223]

> A lot of internet users view "beautiful" webpages as a display of trustworthiness and importance.

Not so much. A lot of web users like simple, predictable pages. Flyout menus spazzing all over the page, giant headers breaking the space bar, and obscure hamburgers hiding useful features just confuse and annoy people who don't know about CSS element blocking.

[marcus_holmes]

Those aren't beautiful pages.

We geeks, who can understand the code, decry the complexity of a beautiful page and prefer not to go there. But we're 1% of the audience.

The other 99% are used to equating beauty and style with quality. More style == more quality. Less style == less quality.

The pages we love because of their simplicity don't do well in the mass market because of their simplicity.

I have taken to calling this the "Kardashian Problem" - I don't understand why the Kardashians exist. I am forced to accept that they do exist. Therefore I do not share a worldview with the people who pay money for the Kardashians to exist. The Kardashians are very wealthy, so there are a lot of those people. I am a taste minority, so building things that I like won't make money. I have to build things that the Kardashians would like. I don't understand what they would like, so I must test everything!

[holografix]

I know what you mean. Frankly I think the Kardashians are a force for evil. Promoting selfishness, superficiality and female independence through hyper sexual objectification.

Why are they so popular? Total mystery to me.

[sweeneyrod]

"selfishness, superficiality and female independence" One of these things is not like the others.

[pille]

"female independence through hyper sexual objectification" is meant as a single element in that list, at least that's how I read it.

[clydethefrog]

I hope this is a case of forgetting the Oxford comma.

[narrowrail]

I think we can be charitable here; I'm 99% sure most of us would agree with the intent of the OP.

[mirimir]

I was hoping for an erroneous "in" ;)

[jessaustin]

The implication seems to be that female independence gained at the price of "hyper sexual objectification" is not as noble as that gained through e.g. hard work and responsibility?

[beaconstudios]

I'm not the OP but I read the third item as being "female independence through hyper sexual objectification".

[petra]

Maybe because it let's everybody feel superior over someone else.

[username223]

Maybe I misunderstand what you mean by beauty.

> The other 99% are used to equating beauty and style with quality. More style == more quality. Less style == less quality.

I dunno. Try sitting down with an older relative and watching them try to use a heavily-styled page. There's a decent chance they won't think to click the hamburger. They may accidentally mouse over a flyover and get confused/annoyed when an unwanted menu covers the screen. Or they may try to use the flyover and fail when it retracts because they moved the pointer off the menu for a moment on the way to a nested submenu.

I admit the floating nav-bar breaking page down is a personal pet peeve, though. Seriously, folks. When I page down, I expect the text at the bottom of the screen to appear at a specific place near the top of the screen, and my eyes subconsciously jump there to continue reading. Instead, your nav-bar covers up some unread text, or changes size because "reasons," or you hooked page down and got the scroll distance wrong. You probably won't get it right, so please don't do it. If I want to "nav", I can go back to the top of the page. Or you can put the "nav" on the left, since vertical space is precious, and narrower text is easier to read.

[eeZah7Ux]

Most of the really unskilled users struggle with the complexity of the average webpage. Ads that imitate contents, videos, pull-down menus... they get lost in it.

[marcus_holmes]

Remember that for the 99% of the population that aren't us, form > function.

They don't care if it's hard to use, as long as it looks good.

We're weird because we think form follows function.