Products · Broad category
Microsoft websites
Raised as a usability problem by 38 people on Hacker News over 18 years (2009–2026), in 36 threads.
This is a broad category rather than one product, so its issues aren't ranked on the home page.
People raised many different problems with Microsoft websites, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 38 complaints
- Visiting office.com redirects to Copilot; the Office link is hard to find2026-01-05
- Download links show engagement screens asking for email or social login first2025-12-09
- Hard to find where to use products; sign-in, popups and redirects get in the way2025-06-24
- Unscrollable header takes over half the screen, leaving the article cramped in the bottom half2023-04-09
- Can't find where the official site explains the TPM requirement2021-06-26
- Polish 'Sign in' translated as 'register', so users confused sign-in with creating an account2021-05-03
- Icon fonts fail on Linux, so menus are garbled and hard to use2020-11-05
- Back button adds history entries, so going back requires repeated presses2020-10-30
- Scrolling floods browser back button with dozens of duplicate history entries2019-01-27
- Windows 7 updates must be manually downloaded and the site only works in Internet Explorer2018-03-02
- Couldn't find an XP SP3 installer download link on Microsoft's site2017-06-13
- Clicking a link opens a German page instead of the expected English one2017-04-23
- Site loads only after forcing it; layout is unbalanced and poorly designed2017-02-09
- Text looks blurred and is hard to read on non-Windows browsers2016-10-03
- Navigation was slow and clicking arrow buttons moved the map by a fixed amount2015-11-14
- The page loads very slowly, so the user waits for it.2015-10-06
- Blank page on Android Firefox, and forced rotation to landscape before any content shows2015-03-15
- Text and images fade in late while scrolling, causing stress and making reading hard2014-11-06
- Custom scroll bar must be dragged to scroll; hover menu cannot be clicked2014-07-24
- Hard to find anything on Microsoft sites; newest versions buried in search results2014-06-16
- Hard to figure out which package to install; confusing names and versioning2014-04-02
- A fixed left panel covers half the article text and cannot be dismissed2013-10-19
- Links styled identically to plain text, so users must hover to find them2013-08-28
- Animated background makes the page text hard to read2013-07-23
- Commenter didn't realise the article had more than one page2013-04-15
- Must click a "next chapter" link instead of scrolling through the whole story2013-04-15
- Navigation is so poor the user didn't notice there were multiple pages2013-04-15
- Right third of the page is cut off, so content can't be viewed horizontally2012-10-26
- Top menu is nearly invisible next to the huge carousel, so users struggle to reach products2012-08-23
- Gallery forces navigating to a JPG file and back, unlike a slide show2012-06-19
- Downloading anything from Microsoft's websites is a mess and makes little sense2011-08-31
- Search returns different results depending on which Microsoft site it's typed on2011-07-31
- Cannot select or deselect text on the page, which is annoying2011-01-20
- Hovering over one menu opens another, making the GET STARTED link hard to click2010-10-29
- Video won't play unless user installs Silverlight, which they can't use on their Mac2010-10-29
- Readers think the article has ended because footer hides more content with no visible scrollbar2010-09-18
- Some product keys show up, others don't, with no way to tell which products need keys2009-06-03
- Badly designed form takes 30 minutes to fill in, then fails with a server error2009-01-22