What are your pet hates online

[mack]

Web articles with no date (no idea how current the info is)

Mack.

[Essex_boy]

A local does this, click for info, clicked, info, click here for further info and back to first page on and on

[sonjay]

The ever-increasing intrusiveness of advertising: popovers, always-visible ad footers, slide-outs, slide-overs, flyovers, singing dancing twirling until "OMG just make it stop!" I resisted AdBlockPlus for a long time, but now I've embraced it completely, and I block everything all over the place using the broadest possible filter parameters. I'm sure I'm now missing content that I'd actually want to see, but I consider it a small trade-off for getting rid of the annoying crap.

Also, forums in which everyone always quotes in full every message that they're replying to, including multiple nested replies and huge layout-breaking images. Often you have to scroll past 5 screens of quoted material to get to a 2-word reply.

[brotherhood of LAN]

sonjay, that's a good one RE: quotes. It's something I never see on this forum and I'm glad for it.

[lucy24]

:: snrk ::

Over on another forum, someone quoted someone who... Well, it was a foo-type subforum so we decided: What the hey, let's see how deep we can go with the nesting. Useful experiment. This was in php/bb2, so quite a while ago. When the quotes got around 50 deep the code started getting a bit hiccupy and the administrator decided it was time to pull the plug.

Coincidentally I've just been checking the links pages on the same site. I can tell that this area isn't a top priority, because it's been, hm, a good many years since I was located at members dot cox dot net. And all those geocities links will have to go ;)

But along the way I was reminded of another www feature that exasperates me to no end: domain-squatter pages that are so spiffily designed and have such a carefully constructed Related Links list that you have to study the page for many seconds before you realize that it isn't a real site's home page and it will not answer your question.

... Until the third time you land on the identical page. By then you can proceed directly to: OK, cross off that link. In the meantime, can't they just say "All your domain are belong to us" in big red letters and be done with it?

[mack]

Captcha style security measures that reset the entire form if you get the text wrong. Just had that now, not impressed :)

Mack.

[johnhh]

All those 'We use cookies..' popup screens on UK sites due to supposed EU legislation ignored everywhere else in the EU.

[mack]

Yea they are getting to be a bit much, especially since in many cases the language used will confuse the user rather than inform them.

Mack.

[Automan Empire]

Sites that hijack the back button with a dialog box. Of COURSE I'm sure I want to leave your site! Let go of my virtual lapels or I'll... well what can you do, besides REALLY never want to go back now? Wonder what the conversion rate is on these?

Also sites (like a certain large higher educational forum) that use ad servers that mean clicking the back button 3 or 4 times (and FAST) to reach the page before, but even that is easier than the site navigation they have.

Do NOT mess with my back button!

[piatkow]

But along the way I was reminded of another www feature that exasperates me to no end: domain-squatter pages that are so spiffily designed and have such a carefully constructed Related Links list that you have to study the page for many seconds before you realize that it isn't a real site's home page and it will not answer your question.

Was caught out by one of those recently, on another forum a guy posted a problem - with a quick look at the page it looked fine and posted that he should clear his browser cache. Only revisiting the thread later did I realise that he really had lost his domain. Didn't do my credibility much good on that board!

[mack]

Going back to the UK cookie law pop up screens... Just came across one on a fairly legit looking site. It had an image of an "x" at the top right. You would think this closed the box right? Wrong. It was a blind link to an add on a cpm network.

Mack.

[Visit Thailand]

As all emails I receive are converted to plain text for security reasons. I really dislike e-Xmas cards/messages. Especially generic ones. They just get deleted without ever being seen.

Another, is people you have worked with online for years, that still cannot spell your name right!

Oh and Happy New Year!

[piatkow]

Nice combination of things that have just made me fume:

1. Booking tickets for a gig the agency that the promoter used was one that I had been forced to use for one booking about a year ago. They require you to create an account so I have to put in a "forgotten account details" request before I can buy a ticket using my normal email address.
2. Then I miss a field on the input form, so do I get prompted to re-enter? No, I have to start again.

I text book example of how not to do ecommerce in my view.

[Green_Grass]

Bad navigation.

I just can't get to where I want to go.

[dmorison]

Sites that detect a mobile user-agent and force you into their mobile site with no get-out link back to the desktop version.

[mack]

Or, they do let you go to the desktop version, but send you right back to the mobile version when ever you click a link.

Mack.

[lucy24]

I just can't get to where I want to go.

Been there. Done that. In this very thread in fact ;)

When you come across a page by accident
<snip>
and later when you want to go back to the original page you can't find the #### thing anywhere even when you follow every single link that's even remotely likely, and by this time you've forgotten what search term led you to the site in the first place, so you can't simply look for it again, and everything in your browser history takes you to the same wrong page, and...

It's really amazing how many different pages on a site can turn out to have the same title, so even when you think you've methodically re-opened every item in your browser history, you never get anywhere.

File under: Argument #23 for giving each page a unique title.

[g1smd]

Landing on a page that has no navigation at all.

It's a page that's part of a framset. Really? Wake up. It's 2013, not 1997.

[Lame_Wolf]

Sites that have links/resource pages and not maintained. I was checking one today and out of about 80 outbound links, only 5 still existed. Some of the sites had been dead for years.

[incrediBILL]

My pet hates online are when the cat swats at my cursor, sits on top of the monitor with his paws dangling over the screen making it hard to read, or worst of all walks across the keyboard.

Now that I've got that silliness out of me...

* Any website that doesn't use responsive web design (RWD) methods. I may be using it on a mobile device or in a less than full screen window on my desktop. I don't care about your design requirements but I do care if I can't use it because then it's useless. Web sites designed by rigid minded little web designers that still think using HTML 2 with 800x600 tables and no javascript is the best web experience need to get off the internet and find a new career.

* Sites that have itty bitty fonts trying to jam too much stuff on the page and then don't scale properly when resized or enlarged and often clip text or it overflows the viewport without scrolling. Case in point, Yahoo Mail will literally shut down with a javascript message that you have an insufficient viewing area if you enlarge the page once or twice to make it easier to read on a big screen.

* Sites that immediately pop up a window asking a question and covering up what I came to read, which if not easily cleared, will result in tab closed

* Inconsistent ways to close those JS windows that pop out in front of everything. They may have a method to close either on top or bottom and it might be either an [X], a link "Close" or "Exit", or even a button "CLOSE" or "OK". Desktop UIs are consistent in this area, websites are infuriatingly not.

* Web articles with no date which is trendy now thanks to SEOs.

* The stupid onslaught of web posts of lists of stuff like "Top ten pet hates online".

* The fact that ecommerce is still so easily defrauded all these years later because the simple solutions to fraud, like typing in a PIN or verifying purchases via SMS on the CC holders phone, still aren't being done and we all suffer with increasing prices thanks to complacent CC companies afraid to make a dent in their cash flow by possibly inconveniencing shoppers and it's all at the merchant's and consumers expense.

* My biggest pet hate are low contrast between fonts and background. White on yellow or grey on black, anything that bad and my old eyes find it hard to read. I have to highlight the text in order to read it as the select mode with white letters on a dark blue background are much easier to read. Those "cool" designs are more often than not hard for anyone with any visual issues, regardless of age, to read and you could be eliminating customers.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I remember a post in the copyright forum here where the OP was complaining about the quality of outsourced articles which they found to be full of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, and basically asking how to "train writers in English"..

Shouldn't there be a comma before "which" and no comma before "and" (not to mention the cavalier attitude to using more than one period at the end of a sentence? :P

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Actually I also hate forums with no proper editing tools. :)

[Leosghost]

Such things ( commas and stops ) depend upon where one pauses, and for how long, when one speaks..I write as I speak..With long(ish) pauses at the end of sentences, indicated by two "stops"..;P

To protect the identity of the poster, I didn't link to the post that I referred to, I was not the only one ( to judge from other comments made at the time in that thread ) at the time, who found their "irony meter needle" somewhat bent, after reading it..:)

* The fact that ecommerce is still so easily defrauded all these years later because the simple solutions to fraud, like typing in a PIN or verifying purchases via SMS on the CC holders phone, still aren't being done and we all suffer with increasing prices thanks to complacent CC companies afraid to make a dent in their cash flow by possibly inconveniencing shoppers and it's all at the merchant's and consumers expense.

All of my three banks ( in France ) have been doing this for years ( at least the past 5 years according to my records ) with the Visa and Mastercards they issue..They send an SMS "one time code" to a designated cellphone, it is required to authorise each/any purchase made online..

Those "on the left side of the pond", might want to ask their banks, why "old Europe" has had this security facility for years ( and it applies when I purchase from USA sites too )..and yet USA banks and card issuers, don't offer it to their customers ?

[edited by: Leosghost at 12:37 pm (utc) on Jan 3, 2013]

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Happy New Year LG. ;)

[Leosghost]

To yourself also BDW :))..raises glass of 10 year old Laphroaig* to you ..:)

Speelchucker on this box thinks Laphroaig is incorrect ..!

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

It's known colloquially in Scotland as "leap frog". :)

[Lame_Wolf]

Such things ( commas and stops ) depend upon where one pauses, and for how long, when one speaks..I write as I speak..With long(ish) pauses at the end of sentences, indicated by two "stops"..;P

You should be using 3 stops, which is called an ellipsis. :P

[SevenCubed]

...

[SevenCubed]

^ I've been slowly mellowing in thought for a few weeks.

[Leosghost]

I'm watching your post count..;)

[SevenCubed]

Oh my gosh I just realised I survived to become a Senior Member! Wow that's a testiment to the patience of the moderators of Webmaster World! Thanks guys.

It was especially trying for them in the early days when I used to manage to get whole threads deleted even though I wasn't the OP! But, I'm mellowing out in my Senior time here :(