Sites like this would make sense to me if I downloaded them as .ppt files.

I don't understand the need to 1) be so clever and 2) get mad when people call you for being annoyingly clever.

I mean, first you take away the scroll bar, because it's ugly. Fine. Whatever. Next, you expect me cause the page to transition by moving RIGHT and LEFT. Not UP and DOWN, you know, like web pages have always worked. Finally, you don't bother to mention this fact anywhere on the website?!

>I don't understand the need to 1) be so clever and 2) get mad when people call you for being annoyingly clever.

What's clever? It's just a link to an online presentation. They don't use links etc because it's not a web page, just a html document -- it's primary use is for seeing it as slides through a projector.

This fact is evident both from the text and from the site's looks, and from that everything else follows (how you navigate, etc).

But confusion would still be OK, if we haven't had the exact same discussion 100s of times before on HN -- and if we weren't 99% devs, supposed to be able to solve much worse "mysteries" on our own...

> But confusion would still be OK, if we haven't had the exact same discussion 100s of times before on HN

Hyperbole much? Or am I getting forgetful?

> and if we weren't 99% devs, supposed to be able to solve much worse "mysteries" on our own...

Ok, you get points for this.

There's nothing on the page to indicate that it responds to hotkeys, and there's a big (dead) link front and center that's labelled as leading to the presentation.

This. If I was to randomly stumble across this, without having had someone say "use arrow keys"... there is NOTHING on the page to indicate what to do.

I'm sitting at my desk... one hand holding a soda, one hand on mouse... and... nothing.

What would I do normally? Mouse 3 (back page) and never return.

Why? As far as it looks like, it's just a simple page with an "presentation coming (soon)" front page.

Horrible UX.

Fair enough! But I for one managed to guess from context (a solitary cover page just wouldn't make much sense) that I was looking at one of them there fancy "presentation HTMLs" and then I just had to guess how to work it. I tried the scroll wheel first (a reasonable expectation), then up-down keys (as many people would), and finally left-right turned out to do the trick.

Some species of HTML presentation-creating software have the good sense and courtesy to put a navigation hint on the cover page. I think it would be a good thing for that to happen more universally.

Navigational hints would be one step ("Use arrow keys to navigate" would be soooooo simply to add).

Alternative methods would be another (floating/transparent arrows on the sides... prev/next page area's to click... sliding bar on the bottom to indicate something that can be moved)

My two main gripes are lack of indicators/training... and forced use of keyboard. This is the web. Smart phones, tablets, mice, etc...

But... that's just my not-so-humble non-ux-guy opinion :)

I clicked on "This presentation is available at..." and got a 404. So, yes, I was confused.

The experience is less than obvious when browsing from a phone.

Swiping left is not my default when visiting a website.

bad UX? anyway, need to enable JS by default

AND yes, pressing arrow-keys on a webpage is definitely not (yet?) intuitive

Space-bar makes sense tho, as it should have scroll down by default

>bad UX? anyway, need to enable JS by default

It's not a website. It's a PRESENTATION (given with a projector et al) made available online.

JS on by default, is the default for the modern web in any case.

Cannot remember having seen it.

Tip: on my mobile at least, swiping works. (Protip to googlers around here: no, stop doing this on default blogger theme)

I read on an iPad.