Trader’s Narrative

I didn’t know I was a haxor… until now. I hope Andy won’t mind me posting this - since it’s just more publicity for his site!

Here’s how to get inside mytrade.com, without a beta invite:

1. Go to google.com
2. type in “mytrade.com”
3. click on ‘cached’, for the second result
4. click on the tab ‘stockpodge’
5. voila!

(top left: click on add content to open up the sidebar)

Here’s the proof that I got in (without an invite):

I browsed it in FireFox, IE and Opera and found considerable kinks that need to be ironed out. It was sluggish (especially when opening a feed) and did very wild things when I tried to move around the little windows.

MyTrade.com is simply another Ajaxian content aggregator. Similar to sanebull.com and instantbull.com. Probably more like sanebull than instantbull (what is up with these names?!) Anyway, I don’t see the point of sites like these but then again, what do I know?

Take it for a spin and give Andy some feedback.

Sanebull.com is another new Web 2.0-ish stock market site. It aggregates data from various sources: thestreet.com, Yahoo! Finance, WSJ, etc. And since it is based on ajax technology, it is lightning fast.

Compared to instantbull.com, the interface is very clean and easy to use. Evenso, the offering is so light, I’m not sure if anyone will be seriously using it. A glaring oversight: charts!

I’m not sure how the creators of such sites plan on competing with Yahoo! Finance since even Google is having a tough time unseating them. More competition is better than less; I just wish rather than these aggregators and me too sites, someone would come up with a unique offering.

Recently, two very popular financial sites did a redesign. One was a hit, and one was a miss. I’m not a professional designer but as a user I know almost instantly if a website sucks.

Bloomberg’s redesign is the one I think was a hit. It is very different but still simple, elegant and surprisingly easy on the eyes considering the black background. Everything except the most important headlines is tucked in behind the top level menus. Bloomberg continues with the grid system of design they had before. Only now there is more content on the frontpage and they have also astutely added videos to the frontpage. As all good design, Bloomberg’s manages to make the content become the star while the layout itself melt away into the background.

New Design:

Old Design:

Marketwatch on the other hand messed up a good thing. As opposed to Bloomberg’s major overhaul, they only tweaked their design but in the end made the site much less useable. One of the things that bothered me is that they changed the top level menus. You just don’t do that. People are used to going to a certain place and expect to find the info where they always do. Another element I don’t like is how fragmented the site’s content is now. It is devided into columns, sub columns, boxes, etc. making it cluttered and busy. You’ve got to hand it to a designer who can take the most simple template based on the grid design and make it a disjointed mess.

New Design:

Old Design:

Finally, I’ve saved my scorn for a website that sucks big time: Instantbull. It is so bad I’m not even going to link to it. Why do I not like it? For one, it is an aggregator and has no original content. Basically it is a bunch of bookmarks mushed together. But the reason I will not be going back ever to it is that it commits the most heinous and unforgivable sin of web design: it hijacks your browser.

I use Mozilla and since I have javascript disabled, when I first arrived on their website, I saw an empty square. Apparently, everything on their page relies on javascript - that right there is a major mistake. But I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and I enabled javascript. Instantly their code jacked my browser and resized it to a square. Why, I have no idea. And I really don’t care. There are way too many great sites out there to waste time and energy wrangling with crappy ones.

For more websites that suck, visit Web Pages That Suck.