Jumping Jack Flash
Most websites that get any kind of regular traffic are pretty well designed. The ongoing competition for visits and hits and click-throughs promotes a healthy interest on the part of the website owners to clean up the layout, put the important stuff where it’s easy to see and find, and generally try not to annoy the hell out of the target demographic too much.
Then there are the others. Not the ugly ones, though there are plenty of those. I am talking about the kind of website that turns what was supposed to a be a quick hit to see if you can grab a mailing address of contact info list, or a blurb on a new product, when suddenly, the browser hits a speed bump… 6% loaded… 19%…… 23%…………. hmmm, maybe I can run out for a sandwich…. 56% loaded… maybe I can take a break here and go floss or something. 62%. Wonder if the mailman is here yet. 88%.
92%.
96%. Don’t ask me why, but the loading process always seems to take a coffee break of it’s own right here.
FINALLY THE FLASH ANIMATION ON THE HOME PAGE HAS LOADED. And, boy oh boy, was it worth the wait. First there is the mad scramble to turn the volume down because suddenly some crappy music starts blaring, and all your cubemates turn and give a nasty look. Aren’t you supposed to be working? Then there is the 2-5 minute presentation of some kind. Please, where is the skip intro?
Flash animation, the mark of useless web design. I usually see this on websites of large companies that seemed to have just thrown a bunch of money at having a web presence but have absolutely no idea what they are supposed to do with it. Prime examples, the two major soda giants both have Flash intros. Why, I ask you, am I even going to Pepsi.com in the first place? It’s not like I am going to order a can of diet soda through the website. Oh, wait–I can check out “Pepsi Style” and music and sports and entertainment. Are people actually visiting this website?
A couple other quick contenders for annoying trends in web design:
Those little ad thingies that expand into a larger ad when your mouse passes over them.
The pop-unders the evade my pop-up blockers. Somewhere, a geek laughs himself silly for his prowess at outsmarting the Firefox. He got the pop-under ad. He lost the sale.
PDF-in-a-webpage. Actually, I wasn’t ready for a 5 minute break just at that moment when i clicked that link. Could you at least give me some warning that you’re about to hijack my computer for 5 minutes while IE loads up Acrobat?
What are your website design gripes?
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[…] Original post by Mr. Alex […]
You know what’s funny (and sad) - the Pepsi (36k) and Coke (10k) websites actually have pretty good Alexa ratings. I know that Alexa isn’t the most accurate thing in the world, but it gives you a decent idea. A 10k Alexa Rank indicates waaay more traffic than a site with a 100k rank.
BTW, Mr Alex - say it ain’t so. Say you’re not using IE. IE is just still way too tied into the Windows OS for it to be safe enough to use, not to mention how freaking cool Firefox is with the power you have with extensions. Ok, ok, you can use another browser, as long as it ain’t IE!
Dear Mr. Alex,
These aren’t design gripes, but I hate sites that:
force you to accept a jillion cookies before you can even see them;
take over (or try to take over) your browser — i.e., you can’t return to the site you were at before;
say they’re search engines, but are just ham fisted attempts at sales;
censor stuff (That f***ing p***es me off!);
have a jillion links that don’t work;
demand your name, address, social security number, blood type, credit card number, password, user name, another user name that hasn’t already been chosen, another user name that hasn’t already been chosen, make you check your email for your proof of X, then won’t let you enter the site because one of the aforementioned things doesn’t work;
have comments from people complaining about things.
Ironically yours,
Mr. Monkey
“IE loads up Acrobat?” .. whatever happened to “Firefox loads up Foxit?”
Good call Peter. I meant to include Foxit PDF Reader in my little rant. There is one little cool Adobe PDF feature that Foxit doesn’t do well and that’s fill-in forms. Other than that, the other 95% of the time that I need to view a PDF file, Foxit is soooo fast.
Side note - if you want to prevent any browser plugins for viewing stuff like PDF, etc. from hanging your browser, just set it open the file instead of using the plugin.
For example in Firefox….
Go to Options-> Downloads
Click the View & Edit Actions button, select the extension/application, then click Change Action and set it to open instead of via the plugin.
HTH.