The article above basically says that putting a selection of state abbreviations in a select menu (a.k.a. a "drop-down menu") is annoying. Seriously, you know your state abbreviation, and you can type it a lot faster than you can select it from a list of 50. Especially if you're in Washington, Wyoming, or West Virginia.
That idea blew my mind. I've always put state abbreviations in a select menu, but he's absolutely right—that's annoying.
That brought me to compare the size and width selection features of 2 online shoe retailers, Zappos and the new Endless.com. Although I've used Zappos before, I really like the size and width selectors on Endless.com. The fact that you can select more than one width simultaneously is really nice, too, so I can search AAAA, AAA, and AA-B. (They have other features that I find annoying, but overall a pretty good site.)
That got me thinking about online clothiers, and how annoying their sites are. Perhaps my behavior is atypical, but when I go to a site to buy clothes, I am shopping for me. And you know what? I may not know exactly what I'm looking for, but I know what size I wear. I hate the fact that you can't enter that info up-front, and then see a version of the site with only the things that will actually fit you. For most sites, since I wear medium-tall (38T), that means they have 2, maybe 3 items. Why make me wade through all the stuff that I won't even consider buying anyway?
In this Internet era, I fully expect that if I can't have all the things I want, I ought to at least be able to find digital photos of them. C'mon, Internet, how 'bout it?