The Most Irritating Website 'Feature' Ever

Popup balloons that give dictionary explanation for every word on page

[bouncybunny]

Sometimes my mind boggles at the motivation of some webmasters.

Those popup balloons that give a dictionary explanation for every single word on a webpage. What kind of 'usability', or feature do the webmasters of these sites think they are providing?

On some sites, at least, the words are highlighted with double underlines or similar - which is annoying enough when merely hovering over the word whist reading the article invokes a popup balloon.

But on some sites accidentally clicking the mouse over any single word on the page (even words like 'the') will invoke a popup dictionary of some sort.

Is there a more annoying website feature?

[piatkow]

Is there a more annoying website feature?

Ads that overlay the page content and have to be closed before you can read anything. (I prefer the back button)

[caribguy]

Anything with Kontera, Intellitext or Snap in its name.

Anything that interferes with productive browsing and requires user action to dismiss (or worse, can't be skipped): overlay ads and surveys, interstitials before playing video content, ads that show up in-between pages.

But most of all the dangling top-right corner that reveals a full page ad when hovered over...

Maybe it's just me...

[rocknbil]

List 'em! [webmasterworld.com]! :-)

[piatkow]

Surveys that pop up as soon as you enter the site.

[callivert]

Music that starts playing when you visit a particular page.

[KevinBoss]

I'm going to have to agree with the OP. They are especially annoying because you sometimes have to navigate your pointer in between them to reach an actual link you want to click. Like a flash game gone horribly wrong.