Silliest Site Warning I’ve Seen In a While
I recently ran across the website LetStartUp.com. It’s in the market of matching up people who own their own startups, people who are interested in partnering or investing in startups, etc. It’s actually an idea I had a long time ago to fill an open niche I saw when trying to find similar services. Back then this url was still available, but I guess someone else had the same idea!
I randomly ran across it again and decided to check it out, but was immediately met with this inane “error” message upon loading the home page:
Normally these types of messages are more geared toward viewers with low resolutions who may not be able to see the full width of a site. Still terrible from a UI perspective to hammer your user with an alert, but at least (arguably) reasonable from a logical point of view if your layout will be visually truncated. But warning me that my resolution (as opposed to my browser window) is too big? That’s a new one to me. Sure enough, here is the code from their script:
1 2 3 4 5 | if ((screen.width > 1024) && (screen.height > 768)) { alert('Your resolution is '+screen.width+'x'+screen.height+ '. LetsStartUp.com is best viewed in 1024x768.'); } |
WTF? So the recommendation is not that I resize my browser (which would be bad enough, although it is commonly done), but I’m expected to go into my computer’s settings and reduce the screen resolution for my entire operating system so that I can “best view” their (kinda crappy-looking, by the way) site? And that is crucial enough to stop me dead in my tracks on the home page of the site during my very first experience as a user of their site?
Note to the site author: I’m doing OK with my 2560×1600 resolution, and am able to view your site just fine, in all its glory. In fact, I am able to view more than one site at a time, one of the perks of having a resolution larger than 1024×768. You should try it sometime 
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