A couple of things I hate in web design.

[httpwebwitch]

ONE
pages where every dang pixel is "sensitive". No matter where you put your mouse, something happens. Whitespace that has hover effects. Things that fling onto the screen when you hover over nothing in particular. Ever try to switch windows by clicking into what you think is some harmless space, and find yourself waiting to see a lightbox popup, or unknowingly sparking an advertisement?

TWO
Pages that are so saturated with features that they become a nasty mess. Pages that have 100K of markup, 20K of images, and 450K of JavaScript. I don't really need to see a toolbar, details, features, other products, sponsored links, more products, a tagger, a comment zone, a rating widget, more reviews, some discussions, listmania, guided search results, other categories, feedback, my recent history, my recent searches, and another nav menu all on one page.

AMAZON, ARE YOU LISTENING?

[Matthew1980]

Hi there httpwebwitch,

Yes I agree with both of those points, especially the first.

I will add 1 pet hate to your list - when you see people who have so many toolbars and search bars, antivirus bars etc that it actually makes the viewable area of web space around a third of what it should be.

Developers/programmers spend time creating pages that are intended to be viewed in optimal viewing areas (these days sizes exceeding 1024x768 seem to be standard) not squished out of sight by added, and allegedly needed extras like toolbars.

Cheers,
MRb

[celgins]

I agree with your observations httpwebwitch. But amazingly, I think the average Internet user expects pages to be filled with crap these days.

Actually, many web users don't know what it's like to view a "clean" page. If all they see are Amazon, Facebook and Youtube pages, they are constantly getting bloated, toolbar-filled pages that attempt to appease their every move.

[OutdoorWebcams]

The overuse of animated GIFs.

I hate pages with tons of buttons, bars, whatevers which are all animated GIFs, blinking and running all over the place.
This can really result in a serious headache before you are able to grasp the original meaning of the page.

(Very popular in a certain Southern European country...)

[rocknbil]

ONE....
TWO....

I could be wrong, but didn't you just describe an RFP for a "Web 2.0 website?"

:-P

Adds to list . . . attitudes that say "this is the way the web is going, if you don't like it, take your computer back to the store." We can have all that stuff, but we can still access the content if it's all disabled. Oddly enough . . . it's mostly "techies" that are disabling the widgets.

[LifeinAsia]

(Very popular in a certain Southern European country...)

As well as in several East Asian countries...

[MichaelBluejay]

I've always imagined that Amazon and eBay execs spend their days in the board room scratching their chins and thinking, "Hmm, how can we make the site SLOWER?"

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

But... #2... Matt Cutts said so. more, more!