Web Site Aggravations

I visit a short list of web sites regularly, mostly news and tech. I’ve been collecting notes to myself about features on those sites that are guaranteed to grate on my nerves. Almost without exception, each impresses me as arising from some concept of coolness, or because-I-can-ness, rather than actual usefulness. Definitely each of them smacks of too-many-geeks syndrome. In no particular order, they are:

Links to loud, obnoxious videos instead of text, without any prior warning

Or really any videos for that matter. When I click on a text link, I would like to know that a blare of raucous rock is not going to follow. I have no objection to video on web sites (although I think it’s overused), but I want to know if that’s what’s coming up. CNet is particularly bad about this, so much so that I have almost stopped visiting the site.

Which ones are videos?

Some sites, such as CNN, place a little movie camera by the link. They should all do that.

"Survey" boxes that pop out of nowhere and blank out the entire web page

Several sites are fond of this particular annoyance. A very serious offender is BestBuy, which earns special rotten tomatoes due to no "close" button on the box. eWeek often introduces one such box between a link and its target—so you click on a link that proposes to take you to a story about "best monitors for 2009" and a page-blanking box is the result, requiring a click on "continue to story." The purpose: to display advertising, which is blocked by my web browser.

Front page ‘rotator’ displays

Maybe some people like these; I don’t. Various stores + pictures are designed so as to rotate through an onscreen box. In most cases you can stop the thing by clicking on a button, or else the rotator is controlled by tabs on the bottom or sides. But they drive me bats anyway; I go to a particular web site, my eye is caught by an interesting topic, and wham it’s gone, replaced by something else.

Click it quick before it goes away  

In the case of Newsweek, in my opinion the worst offender, it isn’t even immediately apparent how to stop the damn rotation, since the tabs are large and separate from their pictures. I’ve noticed that rotators appear to be on the wane—obviously I’m not alone in my aversion to the stupid things. (Somebody needs to tell Microsoft about that; they’re still using one on the front page of microsoft.com.) CNet, already in the doghouse due to their stealth videos, is also rotator-happy.

Mouse-over objects in prominent places

Almost as irritating as pop-up survey boxes: menus/windows that sprout as a result of moving your mouse over something. If you use Yahoo’s "full view", moving your mouse anywhere to the left-hand side of the page will result in gigantic, invasive menus, many of which insist that you log into Yahoo before proceeding.

Fortunately, you can turn that behavior off in "page options" by choosing the compact view mode, but I bet a lot of people don’t know that.

Yahoo at its worst  

Less annoying are the smaller boxes that can result from mousing over a "Share" button or something like that. I don’t mind them all that much, except when they won’t go away—which is often.

Bottom-of-the-page proliferation

This one was particular to one web site (Slashdot) and was the single most unwelcome feature I’ve ever encountered on a web page. For a while, Slashdot would start adding more stories to the bottom of the page as you scrolled to the bottom, rather like an endless regress of sorts. It slowed the site down dreadfully and gave one the feeling of being trapped in a vortex.

Fortunately the ‘feature’ was removed.

Overall Worst Offenders

For irritation, two tech sites stand out: CNet and eWeek, both of which go out of their way to annoy. In CNet’s case, stealth video and rotators; in eWeek’s, advertising blank-out boxes and a faux-front-page that requires a second mouse click.

Least Offenders

Apple, Engadget, Gizmodo, and Lifehacker are all free of obnoxious behaviors as listed above.


Web site sainthood
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