List of Annoying Things People Code/Don't Code Into Websites

Originally posted by NarCranor. A big thanks to him!

Alright, we are all fans of Star Wars fan sites here, but there are a small number of things I see repeatedly on Star Wars fan sites, and sites in general, that are exceptionally annoying/site ruining or just done badly that ruin ones ability to navigate and enjoy a web site.

1.) Navigation
Wow do people have a hard time setting up a user friendly site navigation. For those who are not familiar with the terminology, site navigation refers to the series of links people click to get to various pieces of content on your website. The real trick to a decent user navigation, is keeping it clear and simple. The number one rule for creating your site navigation, is that any piece of content on your site, should be able to get accessed in a maximum of like, 3 clicks with the mouse, preferably in 1-2 from the main page.

It is really a simple manner of categorizing all the content on your site, and having your main page link to all those categories, and when you do click that category, having all that content listed there. If there is too much content, you subcategorize it once. Just make sure your categories make sense to your visitors, do not make categories that only you are going to understand.

2.) Content
There are a lot of sites that have great theme, gorgeous banner, nice GUI bar, lots of custom animated graphics and the like, yet, after clicking around for 20 minutes, one notices the site actually has ZERO content. It just exists to be a pretty banner and interface. Not sure anyone has said this before, but these websites are not needed. Websites are designed to hold content, be it text, audio, video, images, or whatever the content is that your site is supposed to be focused on providing. The banner, the animated page breaks, the flash animated introduction, the graphic user interface, that stuff is window dressing. That stuff enhances the accessibility and experience of viewing user content. Within 30 seconds of accessing your website, the viewer should be able to get a sense of what type of content they can expect to find on your website, and where to find it. Who cares what the content is, for this purpose. If your website is a blog about your views on recent Star Wars news, etc, Great! Maybe its you making Star Wars jokes, awesome! Maybe its you photoshopping jar jar's head on to various celebrity bodies, who cares? But have content, and make it clear what it is on your main/main navigation page. Some content is more interesting than others, but please do not promote an empty site, OR just say you have the best Star Wars page ever, when you promote especially, promote your content, that is what people go to websites for, not for a fancy animated user interface bar.

3.) Ostentatious Forums
People need to relax with making forums all fancied up. There are forums where every thread has some kind of animated rotating icon, as well as each category in the forum. This is too much. Forums need to be fast if you want people to use them. It gets annoying to post anything on slow forums. The Jedi Council Forums are one of the most popular Star Wars (if not the most popular) forums online, as well as the official site forums, look how stripped down they are; these forums have simple images, nothing too flamboyant. Have features on your forum, but keep the design of if simple and user friendly. Having a bunch of spinning, glowing, animated images pushes people away from actually using a forum, it does not invite them in.

4.) Staff Page
Have a staff page with at least one contact email address that will get checked once a month or so at a minimum. There have been many times when I have stumbled across a fantastic site, wanted to compliment or recruit the people working on it, or even just provide feedback on the site, and been utterly unable to reach the person(s) responsible. Have an easy to find staff page with contact inf

 

6.) Colour clashing Themes/background pictures and overall colour scheme
Isn't it completely irritating when you're going through google and you come across a website whose colour coordination and background images make any content a struggle and a half to read? And after about 1 min of attempted reading, you have eye strain?
Stick to a combination of colours which don't look as if they've been pulled from a Rave.
And keep background graphics of low contrast, making sure they're not distracting pulling attention away from the page content.

(Its more of a problem on social networking sites which have user customisation, but you do get it other places as well.)

 

7.) Music
Dear God, when I go to a website and suddenly music comes on, I want to track down the coder and murder them! There are VERY rare occasions when music MIGHT have its uses, but just because you have a Star Wars website doesn?t mean I need to hear The Imperial March blasting in my ear. Just because you have a Star Trek website doesn?t mean I need to hear KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN over and over again. Music is overkill, and it?s a major turn off for a lot of people when they are looking at websites. The content could be great, but if I have to turn off my speakers when I?m there then there?s something wrong. If you want to put music on, put a ?STOP? button at the top of the website, and I say top so people don?t have to go searching for it.

 

Man, you said it. Poor navigation, poor architecture and an editorial style that was deemed
"unsafe for viewing" at the last Pink Floyd concert. How about 10,000 word articles stretched
out on a column the length of a roll of toilet paper? 30-40 links piled one on another. And a
site editor so bizzare or primitive it makes climbing K2 easier than posting. And of course,
like you said, the music.

Gotta have them crazy tunes, man....

 

Flash Animations for important content, and especially pure flash sites. This means navigation too! If someone can't view your navigation, they aren't going to view anything other than the page they first visited. Sure, it looks nice, but Google and other search engines don't read it, and neither do text based web browsers, and you have to download flash just to make the site workable. Save the flash animations for stuff that isn't necessary for the site, or better yet, just don't do it. If it isn't necessary, it likely doesn't belong on the site. Web Designers NEED to use the KISS Method.

I also dislike websites with no layout whatsoever - those certain websites that look like a fancied up word processed document, that just have text and images on either a background image, background color, or no background at all. It looks so amateur, they are very boring, and I usually avoid those sites unless it has something I really need.

Oh, and Web Design isn't point and click. If you don't know at least HTML, your website is likely not going to be taken seriously.

 

As mentioned by this site, I believe they call that flashturbation when a site uses flash for its content.

 

I hate pop-ups, ads, flash movies that play automatically, and floating menus/ads.

 

I don't like when sites have those entrance pages where it says "Click Here to Enter the Site."

 

I don't like that either until it's a flash intro. Another thing I really don't like is when you go to a site and it's Under Construction.

 

Here's one that I know most of us don't take into account, and I didn't either until I met a person at a number of different conferences who was blind- always make sure that your alt text is descriptive, because the software that visually impaired folk use to navigate the web will read it for them. If there's no alt text, they won't know what's going on, and if the alt text is completely random they'll probably be confused. But it's something good to keep in mind.

 

That's a very good point. The latest book I've read on XHTML requires that you do everything you can to make sure screenreaders let the users know what's on the page.