I agree with the plethora of videos everywhere. And no, I don’t tell the site. Why should I? I navigate out of it and never, ever come back again. Not my problem.
I also hate sites that disable your back button, though I see that less now.
And the commentary! I’ll watch some perfectly fun and nice Bollywood video on youtube, and I’ll scroll down, and there’ll be a Hindu-Muslim fight in the comments. Every. Single. Time. Get over yourselves, assholes. Neither of you are right and neither of you are that important, and can’t you just enjoy the music?
Rollover ads. Just because my mouse accidentally scrolls across, it doesn’t mean I want you hogging half the screen.
Worse – rollover ads that hide the close button. Put in in the upper right like everyone else.
Music on websites. I’m listening to what I want to hear as I surf. Why should you mess that up? (one exception – if you’re looking at a band’s website, then it’s not unreasonable to hear some of their music, but you can expect that).
For much of the stuff that bugs me about the Internet, I have found that Firefox has a remedy.
I hate anything that is flashing, blinking, or moving on the page. As of late, it is the stupid Twitter feed boxes on news sites that I hate. The Readability add-on for Firefox is becoming my BFF.
Similarly, all the Flash stuff that is everywhere, flashing, blinking, and moving on the page. The Flash Block add-on for Firefox is wonderful!
I’m a computer programmer. I hate it when I search for a problem only to find out that it might have been answered on Programmer’s Exchange, which wants me to pay to find answers. Someday, I hope to find a Firefox add-on that will allow me to build a list of sites that I never want to see in my results set. Programmer’s Exchange would be the first item on the list. I should probably write that add-on.
Also in the technical vein, I hate it when I find someone who is writing a technical response or is describing how to do something in a particular language, but doesn’t give any idea of the time period in which he or she is writing, or what version of the language/framework is needed for the solution. No add-on for this, sorry to say.
Now that you mention it, yeah, I’ve seen that word on a lot of these. What exactly are they, and why is it necessary for them fill up 10-15 consecutive, identical comments? Is it CNN (or whoever) saying, “Look at how many people have linked back to this article!” Who cares?
I hate when I click on what I think is a news article, but its a 10 frame slide show. Or when the article has several pages with just a couple paragraphs per page. Sometimes if there’s a ‘print’ button I hit it ( I don’t actually print), and it puts all the article on a single page, but its still annoying.
Another thing is when you search for something on a retail page and it only displays 10 items on the page, with no option to increase. I hate clicking next->> over and over waiting for it each time.
I hate when web sites that are clearly bombarded by comment spam can’t be bothered to install a captcha for comments. Yes, Cracked.com, I’m talking to you.
But that would mean I would have to go on the site, navigate past their stupid video, find the “contact us” tab, and bitch. It’s like a store I don’t like - I just don’t go.
And I will make complaints to a website I like that has a feature that is messed up. I just refuse to deal with the vids.
Gotcha, and on review you’re right. I will say that if it were a site I had been using and enjoying in the past I would say something, but a new site would go on the “avoid henceforth” list.
Holy buckets that is bad. I’ve got good bandwidth, and it took forever to load, only to be confronted with a picture of a guy (chef maybe) floating around the page, and you have to click again to get anywhere.
I find that car manufacturers tend to be bad about that. Really, if I go to “automanufacturer .com” just send me to your front page. Don’t make me play a guessing game as to which cutsie part of the page I need to click on. Don’t give me a rollover of what the headlights look like when they are turned on. Give me a nice page of text that I can click on a simple link to what I want to look at.
It is not the concept of comments I find disturbing, but the large number of ignorance-laden comments. I guess anonymity brings out the absolute worst in some.
Or better yet - having to watch a commercial before a video, then getting the message “The video you have requested is no longer available.” Tell me that BEFORE making me watch the damn ad!
I hate what the net has done to contests and giveaways.
Used to be a time when you would twist open your Diet Coke, look underneath the cap to see if you won a free Diet Coke. Or tickets to Six Flags. Or whatever. Nowadays, you have to register on their site and enter the code.
Or you go to a restaurant with a promotion. You buy the 96 ounce Super Gulp because that’s the one with the tickets on it. You peel off the tickets, only to find instructions to go to some website and, yup, enter the code. YOU CAN BE AN INSTANT WINNER (but only if you spend 10 minutes registering at arbys.com).
I never receive the Publisher Clearing House mailers anymore. It was a pleasant few minutes spent each year looking at all the worthless crap, maybe ordering a magazine, and thinking about what would happen if Ed McMahon really showed up at your door. Now Ed’s dead, the PCH mailers are dead, and magazines are (so they’re telling me) dying.
It’s also a prime example of the moronity that is having the landing page effectively blank apart from a button labelled “Launch website”. Look you idiots, typing in the URL and hitting enter ought to “launch” your website. Is this meant to increase the sense of anticipation for the crap for which you paid far too much to a fresh-out-of-college “web designer” with a Flash For Dummies book back in 2004?
Maybe it’s tacit acknowledgement that the thing takes too damn long to load. It’s a nice tip-off to more experienced web users - if a website is so bloated that it needs to be “launched”, I’m not sticking around while it lumbers off the launchpad.