Comments on: Things that really bug me

By: lenny

lenny — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:58:31 +0000

Side scroll…even just a little bit.
Huge ads that take up the first half of the page (a la smashing magazine, thank you adblock plus).
Splash pages…all of them.
Pink backgrounds.
Little images that float around.
Cursor images.
Flash ‘content’ that sit above (and subsequently hide) navigation dropdown menus.
Blogs entries titled ‘Intro to jQuery’ (especially when written by someone who just started using it)
Links that when hovered turn bold and makes things jump around (or causes a new line)

By: James

James — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 23:00:15 +0000

@Alex, I never mentioned standards. I’m only talking about validation and what it means to the average website visitor, i.e. Nothing! Also, what do you mean “tons of errors” – Validating this page only reveals one error…

By: alex

alex — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:46:47 +0000

About useless badges, ok, can be; It’s useless space.
…Validation means nothing… I absolutly NOT agree with you with this!
Browser renders are build over standards (apart IE microshit), and have a page without errors helps to get the maximum speed in rendering and maximum compatibility.
Your site has tons of errors and looking into page sources reveals several bad programming attitudes.

By: James

James — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 20:27:48 +0000

@Rick, yeh, I forgot to mention ads. Most people hate them though; I wanted to be original! – But you’re totally right – those ‘context/keyword’ ads are damn annoying!

By: Rick

Rick — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:29:52 +0000

Great article. But what about intrusive ads? There’s the noisy flash banners (usually for free smilies), the ones that turn every keyword in the content into a link for more info with a preview hover as mentioned above (no examples sorry), or even twisting the content through ads as seen here (http://www.pctipsbox.com/how-to-disable-the-automatic-restart-on-system-failure-in-windows-vista/)

By: Shane

Shane — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 18:09:48 +0000

Yep – they’re the ones. I bet I hate them more than you

By: James

James — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 17:40:59 +0000

Hi Shane, do you mean these things? – http://www.snap.com/ – I hate them so much!!

By: Shane

Shane — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 11:16:30 +0000

I think the ‘ego-inflation’ badges are rather ugly, take up quite a lot of space, and don’t necessarily communicate that much to the average user. The first thing I do when I see them is to validate the page, and I’m never that surprised when it doesn’t validate

I absolutely detest those preview thingies that pop-up when you hover a link… somebody help me here, I don’t know what they’re called, but they show a little preview of the website before you’ve clicked the link. The preview slows the site down, is obtrusive and the preview aspect is a misnomer.

I also dislike quotes on websites. Typically they are from eminent scientists or philosophers, but to me, their inclusion is rather tacky and annoying.

I know as soon as I click your ‘Submit Comment’ button, I’ll think of about five more things!