What is REALLY annoying in the web sites?

[Giaguara]

What does really annoy you when you surf? ( maybe those of us who make web pages can get some hints from results. )

My annyoances:

- sites that require flash or you can't see any content
- sites in flash that don't give the "skip animation"
- sites in flash that don't offer static html for faster browsing (seriously, if i want entertainment i go to movies)
- sites in flash that are slow. everyone does not have dsl, so if it takes time on a 28 k modem, i get bored in dsl
- sites that use flash "only to use flash", so when they would have been able to a lot faster and functional, easy to navigate site on static html, but chose to use average flash instead of good html
- sites that have an unrequested pop-up in the main url, thus if you don't allow unrequested pop-ups you can't see it (and then no "nothing happens? click")
- sites that open a new page with huge dimensions
- any non requested pop-ups
- sites that request registration to see nothing really (when you hoped to see something you were looking for)
- sites that have cliches such as "click here" "more about me"
- sites that don't work on safari, firebird, icab, links etc - when you are foced to use IE (especially bank etc sites)
- clipart graphics, annoying and heavy background sounds (at least the latter can be skipped in safari..)
- dirty html, slow loading no matter if it's due to huge graphics, bad html, tosn of javascript, active-x etc, or flash. all the same, slowness is boring.
- also sites that are done nicely but have nothign to say

 

[Arden]

Let's see...

• Sites with text too small to read, requiring me to make it bigger myself. I don't care if you like how it looks on Windows, make it bigger!
• Sites with lots and lots of tables (read: most forums out there) that bog down IE, when I use IE at least.
• Sites that no longer exist pointing you to a web service company or something, like www.tactical-ops.net.
• Any and all ads.
• Sites that rely on some fancy scripting that only works in Windows. And not just banks.
• Ugly layouts/designs (like Slashdot).
• Buttons that tell you absolutely nothing about their function or purpose (again, Slashdot—see the 5 buttons to the right of the title? WTF do they do???).

I could probably go on for an hour...

 

[mdnky]

Here's my list:

- Sites that are not Standards Compliant
- Sites that rely on javascript and tables for nav/layout
- Sites that use Flash
- Sites utilizing Java which are MSIE-WIN only (Java...it was afterall developed as a cross-platform language)
- Sites with PopUps or PopUnders
- Sites that specify a min screen resolution or browser type/version
- Sites with automatic background music
- Sites which are hosted on M$ servers
- Sites coded in FrontPage
- Sites that utilize any version od M$'s SQL Server
- Sites that utilize ASP, .net, or ASP.net
- Sites utilizing those transitions (enter or leave)

 

[RacerX]

I still find CSS sites to be the worst on the internet as a general rule. All the talk about standards means nothing until enough browsers render these in a predictable manor.

- Sites coded in FrontPage

I'll go one step further on that one... how about people who charge other people for sites made in FrontPage. That is closely followed by people who have one template they used for every site they make... and then charge for the site.

I do like some flash, but not for content that doesn't need to be active.

And banners that blink or flash! There should be a law against those! If you can't sell a product with a series of images or a mild animation, then you shouldn't be selling your product. Flashing-blinking banners isn't going to help. In fact, who clicks on those anyways?

Java in sites while using Safari. What is up with the delay? OmniWeb loads the same sites (Java and all) much faster. I guess that is more of a browser issue.

 

[phatcactus]

My additions...

- "Liquid layouts" that expand to fill your browser window and render any body copy painful to read
- Layouts that are too fat and won't fit in your browser window and introduce horizontal scroll bars
- Sites that validate but have absolute crap for code
- Sites that validate but have absolute crap for design (not really a good way to convert the masses, eh?)
- Text with too little leading
- Links that change size on hover
- Entire blocks of text, or sometimes whitespace that act as a link, sometimes with obnoxious mouseovers (usually the result of an error in the HTML)
- Ugly URLs
- Sites that copy the Aqua style
- Sites that copy the Aqua style and fail miserably
- ALL CAPS
- no caps
- WeIRd CApS

and, yes, it must be repeated...

- Flashing/blinking/violently twitching/"You're a winner!"/"Warning: Your computer is broadcasting its IP address!"/"Your computer is swarming with viruses!"/"Your computer contains spyware!" banners. DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE. Aaand, die.

 

[adambyte]

Here's my list of peeves. Some of them are rather basic "duh" items of design. Others are just pet peeves of amateurish sites.

- Light-colored text on light-colored backgrounds. I can't freaking read it. There needs to be contrast between the two elements, please.
- Dark-colored test on dark-colored backgrounds. Once again. I can't freaking read it. Get your head out of your butt.
- Repeated background patterns that are high in contrast and tone (or, generally, just busy), thus making text un-f*#%ing-readable (if you want a good example of this, get the "teddy bear" or "sun" picture from OS 9's scrapbook, put that as your background, and proceed to type over it. Congratulations. You've just made the ugliest web page ever. Make the text grey for added annoyance.)
- Javascript tickers in my status bar- get your f*#%ing javascript out of my status bar! I want my "Status" there, not your dumb welcome message!
- Text Image-buttons that aren't Anti-aliased.... what is this? The days of Windows 95 and OS 8.1? Get your butt out of MSPaint.exe and into some other app, please.
- Fake web-counters that are halfway in-between numbers, constantly going too fast, or other "joke" counters.... we get it. That stopped being funny in 1997. Stop it.
- Gratuitious use of "Neko" the cat animations. If I want a cat, I'll go to the pet store and buy one. Get this little hopping bastard of japanimation off of my screen.
- Comic Sans MS ... 'Nuff said.
- Arrows, pointing hands, and other indicators pointing TO the spot that I should click on. Dammit, if it isn't obvious enough that I should click there, it's bad design.
- Pages that assume my screen resolution is 1920x1200. Sorry, I don't have the latest freaking $2000 Studio display from Apple. Make it smaller.
- Pull-down menus within the site (made via either Javascript or Flash), which, once I pull down the menu by mousing over the word, as soon as I move my mouse to pick one of the menu's options, will disappear and leave me back at square one. Sorry my mousing skills are not agile enough to pick something from your damn menu. Maybe I should practice my mousing by playing more Halo.

*flicks off bad web design*

Whoo! Feels good to get all that off my chest! hehe!

 

[Arden]

LOL... Adam is quite passionate, it seems!

How about sites that use the same friggin' title for every page?! I mean, I love not being able to tell which pages I've been to on a site by glancing at my history and all.

 

[Giaguara]

Forgot a big annoyance:
- the links that i can't click to open them in a new tab, but that with some dumb java or flash makes me just go to where i click. sory, most flash sites are not that obvious.. i mean, if i'm looking for something i can think it being lets say in 5 or 10 categories. i want those in new tabs. i dont want to click one, then figure it's not there, go back, go elsewhere, back etc. that is annoying. and many webmails fail to get miserably to this. i want to read a message in the new tab, and then delete all those 107 spams in the main tab meanwhile.
- sites that have the nice nice design .. that you have seen in 5000 sites, and that have nothing to say really, text wise. or that have "nice animations" to compensate having nothing to say. still, if i want a movie i go to cinema, not to a flash site. especially any company's site.

 

[podmate]

- Flash. I friggin hate gratuitous use of flash. If you want to see how flash should be used go look at any of the WGBH built sites on PBS (like Nova or Evolution).

- links that are activated by javascript (like the "new" hotmail). I like to option-click to open the link in a new window, don't take that away from me with javascript redirects!

- Stale links

- Banner Ads

- Sites that require winblows IE for them to work

- Unasked for pop-ups

- any pop-under

- sites made with wysiwyg editors. Well, I really hate maintaining them. Dreamweaver still generates some of the nastiest JS out there. I won't even mention frontpage or go live

- CSS positioning. It would be nice if it worked ALL THE TIME

- Any site served by ColdFusion. Everyone that I have been to is just figgin SLOWWWWWWW

- Any site served with Filemaker. This POS was never ment to be the backend for a site, so just put us out of your misery and stop using it.

- Any site served with Access. See Filemaker above.

- M$-SQL Server. Is it just me or do I see tons of M$ sql-server errors on way too many sites.

 

[mdnky]

My additions...

- "Liquid layouts" that expand to fill your browser window and render any body copy painful to read
- Layouts that are too fat and won't fit in your browser window and introduce horizontal scroll bars

I agree on the layouts which are to fat, but disagree on the liquid layouts.

This brings up another of mine, those static sites setup for people with 640 x 480 resolutions. It's 2004, not 1984. More than 95% of users have at least 800 width available, and really now 1024 is common. Limiting the width wastes usable space. The ideal would to be design on a curve, with a min goal of 800 and a max goal of 1200...if it looks good in that range, chances are most people can have a good to excellent experience. I doubt seriously we could ever afford every user an excellent experience, but we should try at least.

However, a liquid site still is the best for accessibility for the wide ranges of resolutions out there...if it's done right.

In other words, using total liquidity and using %s or ems for text and widths, so everything scales properly.

Someone else said something about positioning, I have to disagree. Granted some CSS isn't well supported among the long list of browsers out there, but alot of problems can be solved by having a second look at the code. A big thing is improper use of doctypes, causing the browsers to render the pages in the wrong mode. That, and anyone using CSS2 in a stylesheet which isn't called with @import. Call a simple stylesheet with the standard link, then add a second within that one with @import...make some poor slob life with NN4 or similar browsers a bit easier. Or just use the @import and let the NN4 and similar browsers see standard html without formatting.

 

[phatcactus]

Limiting the width wastes usable space.

Limiting the width ensures a readable line length. Negative space is not the same thing as wasted space. CSS's max-width provides a nice way to limit line length while still allowing text to "liquify" within smaller windows.

 

[mdnky]

Maybe, but then again it only works for 5% of the browsers. The other 95% don't have support for that yet...I'll be nice and won't name any names here.

In fact, I hate the new layout on ALA. Before it was alright, but this new one is a joke for anyone with a screen res above 800w. I'd really hate to see it on something more than 1200w.

 

[goynang]

Er, you don't have to maximise your browser window, Just because you have a 1200 wide screen (or whatever) doesn't mean your browser window need be so big does it? If you think a liquid site's text is too wide then make it smaller - you have the power.

 

[Arden]

I think the point is that the designers should accommodate for that in the first place, not leave it up to the end user to adjust his browser for comfortable viewing. Most novice users don't even know how to do that, and many people on Windows surf with the browser maximized. On a large screen this takes up lots of space, which should ideally be filled with, well, something.

Also, see my previous posts.

 

[goynang]

As max-width isn't a greatly supported CSS rule yet it's not that easy for a designer to accomodate for it.

Fixed width will invariably be the wrong width for somebody whereas a liquid layout can be made whatever size you want. Whilst I'm all for making things easy for the end user, if they can't resize a window then you've got a problem whatever you do! At some point a user has to take a teeny bit of responsibilty for the viewing environment. Anway, most users using smaller screen maximised will be fine with a liquid layout. Those using huge screen sizes will (often) tend to be the type of user that can make the huge mental leap and resize their window to a suitable size.

That said, I do quite often use fixed width layouts. Often they are simpler to build apart from anything else, and the designer where I work seem to prefer them!

Why, oh why do some people make their pages exactly 800 wide though? I've seen a lot of sites that are just a bit too wide. There's never any need for it - they would have worked just as well if they were 50-100 pixels less wide. Whilst I don't actually use 800x600 there must be a lot of people that still do and are having to scroll horizontally on such sites.

 

[Arden]

One thing that's really annoying is ads like this one, which appears through Mail.com (Warning! May cause epileptic seizures).

 

[phatcactus]

Whilst I'm all for making things easy for the end user, if they can't resize a window then you've got a problem whatever you do!

Honestly, you'd be surprised.

(Warning! May cause epileptic seizures)

I always wonder when I see them, have ads like that ever actually caused someone to have a seizure? I know movies and theme park rides can, but those are on quite a larger scale. Anyone know how that kinda stuff works?

 

[fryke]

I don't know...

- "Liquid layouts" that expand to fill your browser window and render any body copy painful to read

I LOVE those! They look good. FIXED width is what makes pages not fit windows too small for the width and too narrow for wider windows... Why do you make your browser window wider than you want them? Obviously you do, because this wouldn't happen if you'd choose your window size better!

 

[mdnky]

I always wonder when I see them, have ads like that ever actually caused someone to have a seizure? I know movies and theme park rides can, but those are on quite a larger scale. Anyone know how that kinda stuff works?

Don't know about those ads, but I can tell you one on TV that ran about 2 years ago caused an older lady in the area I live to go into one. I was still running on the FD at the time, and was on duty on the puke bus that night.

The lady's daughter met us at the door, all hysterical, and told us what caused the problem. We wound up running her ALS to the hospital, she wasn't in the best of shape after that one.

And our parents always told us TV was bad for our health...guess this was an example.

From what I remember, it has to do with the pathways in the brain becomming overloaded so to speak. Let me look around, I think one of the UK Trauma Symposiums I went to had a big talk on seizures, and the releated causes. I'll see if I can find that year's notes/handout.

 

[eric halfabee]

Well it seems by everyone's comments that the web sucks big time and we should all go back to reading magazines.

My major gripe is sites that don't work probably, bad links etc (oops thats my site) and ones that require Windows only plug-ins - luckily I don't go there often. Also sites that show that my soccer team have lost again.