The Web’s Worst Default

There are a lot of great defaults when it comes to browsers and the web. Think about all the accessibility features that are baked into HTML so that you don’t have to do weird stuff, like this example from Manuel:

<h2 role="heading" aria-level="1" class="sr-only">
  Title
</h2>

Please don't do that.

– h1 – h6 don't need an explicit heading role.
– It's a bad practice to overwrite default semantics.
– If you need a different heading level, use a different HTML element (<h1> in this case).
– If your CMS prevents you from changing markup, switch CMS. pic.twitter.com/3HZBIxV7uw

— Manuel Matuzović (@mmatuzo) June 28, 2021

You can just write your <h2> and the browser deals with the accessibility parts. This is why we should start with semantic HTML first before adding ARIA roles to everything.

There are other great defaults of the modern web, like responsive design: a lot of folks have mentioned that the web is responsive by default and it’s actually us web developers that break it.

Then there are defaults when it comes to CSS. I’m thinking of stuff like flex. It feels pretty darn good to slap display: flex onto a parent element and all the children just snap next to each other since that’s mostly what I want to accomplish.

So: defaults on the web are good!

But there’s also a lot of bad defaults. You might be familiar with my favorite website, an Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS, where the CSS Working Group lists out a ton of problems in the CSS spec such as:

size should have been a shorthand for width and height instead of an @page property with a different definition

These defaults are annoying, some minor, some major. And some of them can be fixed, like the box-sizing CSS property. Yes, there was a time on the web when even adding padding, borders, or width to an element would be confusing as all heck. Now we don’t have to worry about that quite so much.

But I think the absolute worst default on the web was the backspace key—in most browsers, it would force users to go back to the previous page. There have been countless times where I’ve tried to remove text in an input field and suddenly I would be dragged back to the last page I was on and all my data would be lost. That sort of thing makes typing into forms feel so fragile, as if at any moment you might exhale and your entire house implodes.

Side note: I think this is why a lot of folks prefer native over the web. They feel how fragile the web is when it comes to these default settings. When you load an app it feels like you’re on solid ground but a web app? It’s a rickety house that’s ready to fall apart at any moment.

Anyway, I didn’t even realize that Chrome removed the backspace key shortcut way back in 2016! Firefox also removed it earlier this year and yet, to this very day, five years later, I’m still scared of clicking that darn backspace key. I’ll always hesitate if I click the wrong key and then, very slowly, I’ll make sure that I’m focused on the correct input, unless I nuke all my data in the form.

I think this is kind of a good lesson when designing software: first, default settings are the most important thing in the world and are very difficult to get right; second, even if you do the right thing and fix all those bad defaults, habits are extremely hard to break.