Pet Peeve Rant: What annoys you the most about websites?

Ooo! What a great question! Sooo many things annoy me..

The conflation of “sign up”, “sign in”, and “log in”. Use less similar words like “register” or “join”.

Full-window flash websites that break my browser gestures.

I can probably think of more..

I hate how some websites don’t ever have a way to contact them…and if they do list it, it’s only an email and not a phone. I hate waiting for someone to return an email only to get an automated response that did little or no help at all.

This is fun.
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I hate it when websites (like Google) that don’t add id tags. I can’t create filters or alter the content as much.
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I naturally dislike banner ads, but I only get then when I’m using Google chrome, and IE (depending if IE Pro is working) (yes I do use FF normally)
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I dislike it when websites are mainstream that provide a terrible service. Like youtube (but they are working on upgrading video quality, so I’m happy)
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I dislike how so many forums require you to sign up to view threads. I don’t understand the point when I’ll just login the once to view the tread and become an inactive user. (honestly they probably hate how many inactive users they have… irony)
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I dislike websites that want you to pay for the service. meh.
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So basically I want websites to be free, not to make money off of ads, be good quality, and well coded. Funny how that works…
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Oh and I wish that fluther had a way to do new paragraphs so I didn’t have to use periods to force it with periods. lol.

Probably the worst thing for me is when websites autoplay music or video. At anytime I might have 6 or even 20 tabs open and I have to ‘hunt’ for the tab that’s playing some crappy Garageband derivation so I can listen to my Clay Aiken on iTunes in peace.

like myspace or youtube? I know what you mean, I dislike that when I reload firefox and it starts playing 5 different youtube videos. I guess I would like it to autoplay when I browse to a youtube video, but now when it loads out of focus. I agree with you artificiallard, good one.

I hate the ads that talk, especially when I’m listening to music.

Hands down, it’s the animated gifs. All the wriggling, jumping, flapping, flopping, flipping, dancing and flashing little pieces of graphic junk. I just want me a nice big solid gif hammer to whack ‘em with. Whack ‘em dead.

@ TheBox193:
If you put an extra carriage return it will form a new paragraph.

Like this.

However Fluther’s web designer didn’t put enough leading on paragraph breaks so it doesn’t look right.

Web 1.0

When websites have music or ads that start randomly on a tab I opened ages ago and I have to keep closing stuff I needed just to figure out which one it is.

• Sites that are all Flash
• Sites that play music
• Pages that scroll endlessly
• Sites that ignore the basics of good design (composition, typography, visual hierarchy, color theory, etc.)
• Autoplay anything
• That contain images with bad resolution (Too high, loads too slow. Too low, looks like crap -learn to optimize dammit.)

I can't stand those flash ads that slide across the page you're viewing! What really irks me is banners that expand and move the entire page down when I'm about to click on a link. Prime example: allcdcovers.com

@porksoda
I HATE THAT!
I am listening to a playlist and all of a sudden “congratulations, you have been picked to win a new iphone.”

I can’t really think of anything else. Maybe when they are confusing?

Distracting, flashing banners across the top of the page that stay in place as you scroll down the page. No way to hide them or stop them. Argh!

Static backgrounds that don’t move when you scroll through the website. I usually see this on MySpace. Does that make sense? Does this bother anyone else?

Flash?

As for something that you actually occur quite often nowadays: Javascript links.

Fuckdammit, I just want to be able to middle-click links and have them open in a new tab. It’s so annoying when you’re reading something and you middle-click some interesting things, and then when you get to reading those tabs you find out there’s an about:blank page among them and you don’t know where it came from and which interesting link you missed.

@TheBox

You can not host a good website for free. You have to buy server space. Therefore if you’re offering a really good website, you either have to charge or have ads.

Good, high profile sites CAN NOT exist without charging and without ads. You have to do one or the other to be able to pay for server space. (Unless the designers/ programmers just want to lose money by paying from their own pockets.)

Even if a good website cannot exist without ads, it doesn’t mean that a person has to like them.

WTB DVR for internetz; skip ads ftw.

I hate ads.

Does anyone ever really click on ads? – fluther question

Congratulations! You are the 999,999th visitor! Enter to win a free Xbox©!

Then those stupid crush spams.

-music that doesn’t turn off, (bonus annoying points if there’s another song or video playing at the same time or you’d like to play a video but can’t hear it anyway)

-stupid ads that pop up and move around the screen so you can’t CATCH them to ‘x’ em out.

-on photobucket, the videos they’ve been taking to playing while you upload things with the bulk uploader. YES, Windows, there is a reason i do not want windows vista, and it is partly because of your annoying-as-shit ads.

-creepy ads. just, some of them are so creepy.

-the game ads i can’t resist playing

-there’s some ad where a woman randomly starts talking and i can’t even find the ad on the page. not fun at like 4am.

@porksoda CONGRATULATIONS youve be selected to win a free ipod nano!

Jesus Christ! I know! And then there was this one add with the Smiley Faces on it and apparently every time I scrolled over it it would go “HELLLOOOOOO!” in a stereotypical gay voice and I couldn’t figure it out for the longest time.

Also the ones that don’t talk but just look stupid or advertise something stupid like when you’ll die or find out the name of the person who loves you.

If you click it, there’s that stupid Will.I.Am looking one (maybe not him himself, but looks like him) he does some wierd “dododododooow” I HATE IT

@perchik lol, trust me I know.

@everyone that is complainng about internet ads.
Ditch IE/Safari/Chrome/Netscape(lol) for a while. I seriously advise looking into and sampling using Firefox with Ad-block plus. From my experience 95% of all ads are gone… simply gone. (it normally even collapses the space where the ad ‘would be’. Can’t even tell the site has ads.)

@xxporkxsodaxx The smiley ads are still around? I remember those from 6 years ago? It's been a while. Random related video/song related to that ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ton_ZMzzCTc

slightly exaggerated number of years
I think I kinda indirectly know the guy who either runs, or is a major part of smiley central… sorry ..random..

Sadly they are still around :(

popups. Like on Vanity Fair’s website.

Interesting that a few people have echoed my problem with sites that play sound but are buried in one of any number of tabs. I wonder if it’s possible to create a Firefox extension that would show on each tab if there’s sound happening? (Like a little speaker that increases waves or a little equalizer that corresponds with the sound output on each tab)

I keep my sound turned off so I don’t have to hear all the annoying boink and pop and snick and chime sounds that somebody thought would please me while I operate my computer. I switch it on only for a specific purpose and then turn it right back off. So sound that comes on automatically at certain sites never bothers me at all.

I do that, too! I don’t even like to hear the little ‘click’ noises my machine makes when I use my mouse.

Sites done entirely in Flash.

When elements shift around the screen as a page loads.

Even with broadband connections there is a perceivable load time, during which it is annoying to try to click on links while the page is shifting around.

@vinifera Yay inline positionining >.<

@Aug, same here. But I do want a little tick at the keyboard. Did you know that when they made silent keyboards, people complained, so they put the tick back in? I think that must be something like the “comfort noise” on the telephone line. We don’t care much for the silence of the void.

@Jeruba: I still miss the sound and feel of the IBM Selectric typewriter!

@Aug, lovedlovedloved my old self-correcting Selectric with the interchangeable type balls. My first real italics! But genuine typewriters <sigh>...another casualty of the electronic age that we will come to regret when we take stock of how many things we rely on that plug in. I do still have a manual portable SCM from 1970 in the garage, but where will I ever get ribbons?

@ augustlan/jeruba

But I am listening to a playlist pretty much the whole time I am on the computer. Isn’t there something that just blocks that crap?

@90s, I sure don’t know, sorry. It never comes up for me. But if some tech whiz answers, I’ll take note so I can listen to music too.

What is it that you are trying to block? I got lost in the random banter

I’m pretty sure we were talking about those random “Congratulations! You have won an iPod!” things that scream at you out of seemingly nowhere.

At least in Vista you have the sound mixer and can change the volume of multiple programs. :)

Firefox down.
iTunes UP!

There’s some free programs that you can use to mute your browser. I didn’t find any for mac, but for pc there’s one called “FlashMute” that seems to have the capability to mute your browser but not everything else.

so lately i’ve been getting this pop up on firefox, and this dude named ‘kevin’ starts TALKING and talking and talking for about 20 minutes. and if you x out the pop up, he keeps fucking talking. and then the only option you have is to either turn the computer off, or mute it for 20 minutes until the bastard stops talking about posting links using google for money. and i’ve been searching a solution this for weeks and i still can’t find anything.
it annoys me more than anything else on the internet.

@tiffyandthewall That sounds like a Trojan Horse virus. I had one and it sucked. Very difficult to get rid of.