Website Pet Peeves

[FeuerFrei]

Caching radar snapshots. ISPs should know better than to cache radar imagery. Doing this causes people to mash refresh furiously hoping to get a more recent radar image. Weather site visitors need CURRENT conditions, not conditions half an hour ago.

Of course weather websites need to do their part by putting NO_CACHE in their HTTP headers.

 

[Thebobo]

You do a Google search, click on a link, then the site will not let you hit the back button to go back to the search results. Really you assholes, you are going to make me close the tab and then open a new one to redo the same Google search?

Yea no shit. Hate those fuuckers

 

[FeuerFrei]

My number 1 website pet peeve is when I'm googling a news story and the site has a full article about the topic, but decides that it needs an automatically loading video clip at the top with some douche saying exactly what the article says. Half of the time I go back right away when I see this and find another site. What are your biggest website pet peeves?

Could be a helpful on-demand option. Article too long? Too busy to read? Click here to have a douche read it to you!!!

 

[kranky]

Most have been mentioned.
- When the back button doesn't take you back to a logical place.
- Pages overloaded with scripts from various hosts and you don't know when it's actually done loading - and the stop button is ineffective.
- those page headers covering a third of the screen that float down when you move up on the page.
- when you are taken to a page to enter a password and the page doesn't position your cursor in the text box so you have to click there first
- those slideshows that do a complete reload for every slide. I know why they do it (more ad impressions) but it's still maddening.
- when you have to fill out a form with multiple text boxes, and if it detects you screwed up (left a required entry blank, entered invalid data somewhere) then it forces you to go back and start all over again instead of allowing you to complete the botched field.
- multi-level dropdown menus that are so sensitive, it takes a brain surgeon's touch to navigate without falling off the menu and having to start over.

 

[Nashemon]

- those page headers covering a third of the screen that float down when you move up on the page.

Oh my god. These! I've seen ones that fluctuate in size once you start scrolling, then you scroll up just a little, and it changes in a different unexpected way and covers what you're trying to read, and you have to play this game where you scroll up far enough just so you can scroll back down without it being in you way. UGH!!!

 

[Red Squirrel]

Oh my god. These! I've seen ones that fluctuate in size once you start scrolling, then you scroll up just a little, and it changes in a different unexpected way and covers what you're trying to read, and you have to play this game where you scroll up far enough just so you can scroll back down without it being in you way. UGH!!!

I actually ran across one the other day that was smack in the middle of the page. WTF! I just don't get what is up with this trend of trying to make sites suck as much as possible. I'm just picturing some CEO meeting with the web masters and tons of buzzwords get thrown around, the webmasters come up with this terrible design the the CEO is like "That's GREAT! Upload it NOW!"

Edit: I found that site I was talking about:

http://www.1019rock.ca/2016/09/08/move-underway-build-new-motorsports-facility-area/

That is the most infuriating thing. Don't worry about reading the article, because I sure as hell didn't. lol. It's bad enough when they put those headers on top or bottom but this one is like half way across the page so it splits the content.

 

[Imp]

1. Auto-Play videos
2. Auto-play videos that default to max volume.
3. Auto-play video ads that default to max volume.
4. Auto-play video ads that play max volume when you hover over them.
5. Fuck you auto-play videos.

And dynamic pages. Too narrow when I split-screen on 1920x1200. Too wide when I full page it.

 

[smackababy]

Sites that still use Flash.

If you hate Flash, please come up with HTML5 DRM solutions as good as those on Flash, or good enough content providers are okay switching to them. That is the big hurdle holding HTML5 video up. Well, and you may as well go about an convincing Google and Mozilla to suck it up and implement HLS into their MSE. Then HTML5 will work for everyone!

 

[Skeeedunt]

Anything that moves/rotates/blinks etc (does that mean I have ADD, or that everyone else does?)

Modals can DIAF, I don't want to subscribe to your newsletter

Anything that makes noise

I'm not 100% what infinite scroll is by I don't think I hate it

 

[Spacehead]

Javascript! The overuse of it anyway.
I just want to read your site. I go there & it's just a plank page. OK, i'll allow the domain in NoScript. Now there just text. Really? You can't just display text without resorting to javascript? And i consider myself lucky if it's only 1 or 2 domains i have to allow in NoScript to get a site to work with something simple like plain text.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Javascript! The overuse of it anyway.
I just want to read your site. I go there & it's just a plank page. OK, i'll allow the domain in NoScript. Now there just text. Really? You can't just display text without resorting to javascript? And i consider myself lucky if it's only 1 or 2 domains i have to allow in NoScript to get a site to work with something simple like plain text.

Yeah it's ridiculous. News sites are probably the wrose for this too. I actually gave up using noscript because it just makes doing any kind of research near impossible. But it just comes to show the ridiculous state of "modern" web design. A news site should be more or less static client side. Sure, php or whatever in the background but as far as the client is concerned it should be mostly static. It's just text, pictures and maybe video. At very least host the js on the same domain, I don't get why they feel the need to have so many domains just for assets.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Sites that change their looks to look and feel like Facebook.

 

[A Casual Fitz]

Oh, I got one. I'll go to a site to check out a video clip of a recent event. Once it's finished, the next clip of something completely unrelated automatically plays. F off.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Presentation of a paragraph of actual text/20 seconds of content via a 5 minute ad-ridden video, or a dozen ad-ridden slideshow pages which take me 10 minutes to flip through thanks to your 300MB website reloading every. fucking. page.

 

[MtnMan]

You do a Google search, click on a link, then the site will not let you hit the back button to go back to the search results. Really you assholes, you are going to make me close the tab and then open a new one to redo the same Google search?

Right click on the back arrow of the browser, then select the last Google search results page.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I ran into a new one the other day, clicked a link and it went to one of those shitty sites that is just embedding a youtube video so I immediately clicked on the youtube video to bring me to the youtube site before I get nailed with a modal or something else like that, and when I went to close the tab for the shitty site, it closed the youtube tab! There's some weird exploity stuff that is aparantly "by design" as part of the html specification which allows for weird stuff like that.

 

[jtvang125]

Those download sites that obscure the real download link and allow ads with giant ones to trick you into clicking on the ad.

 

[MovingTarget]

Javascript menus that move page content when you hover over them, infinite scrolling, autoplaying videos, modals, etc. Its all been covered here. Just give me some gold old fashioned HTML/CSS page anyday instead of all this "lets script all the things and make sure it links to every social media service imaginable!" nonsense.