Web Peeves
There are many things that bother me on the web. These are also the main reasons why I leave the site I'm viewing immediately. These are my pet peeves of the web, hence the title. I may have forgotten some things, but these are the ones that bother me the most.
Bad Grammar and Punctuation
Bad grammar is a serious turn off. I refuse to even try to comprehend anything that has about 10 grammatical errors in one sentence. I know my grammar is far from perfect, but at least it's decent. I hate it when people use a million exclamation points; I believe one is enough. I also hate an over usage of question marks; one question mark is enough. I also hate incorrect usages of "your" and "you're," as well as "they're," "there," and "their." Is it that hard to learn the difference? Actually, I have a lot of hatred towards bad grammar and punctuation. As lame as this sounds, I actually spellcheck and proofread my site. I'm currently working on an article about bad grammar, which will be posted here as soon as possible because this section will be far too long if I continue writing.
Cursor: Crosshair
Crosshair does not show up in my browser. Once, I even tried viewing the website with the IE tab plugin and the cursor still did not show up. I believe this is because my laptop has Windows Vista instead. I pretty much hate it when "designers" use crosshair as their primary cursor; I do not have the time or patience to guess where the cursor is. Most likely if you're using "crosshair," your site's not worth my time anyway.
iFrames
I hate iFrames (inline frames) with a passion. Sure, I used to use it, but that was about 5 years ago. What I hate more than iFrames is people who use them incorrectly. For example, when a "web designer" decides to use transparent iFrames, most of the time it'll look right in the worst internet browser (IE), but neon green in Firefox. If you're going to use something crappy, at least do it correctly.
Internet Explorer Friendly Only Sites
Yes, these type of sites get their own special section here. If you haven't noticed, I'm madly in love with Firefox, so I'm biased. I hate it when I'm browsing a site and it looks like complete crap on Firefox. Sometimes, when I feel like looking through the site, I will reload it with the IE tab plugin. I see these web "designers" as selfish because there are other viewers who prefer other browsers. This would not be a problem if web designers validated their coding. The only time I opened up IE was when I first got my laptop and wanted to download Firefox. IE is a crappy browser that needs to die, end of story.
Non-Centered Layouts
I hate non-centered layouts (l can deal with left aligned layouts.) because there's so much wasted space on both sides. My screen resolution is 1680 x 1050, so if I'm viewing your site and it's to the left or to the right, there is way too much wasted and empty space on one side. Learning how to center layouts is not a difficult task at all. In fact, while you're at it learn about CSS. Also, I don't even know why people bother to have their layouts positioned to the right; it looks stupid and again, an absolute waste of space.
Weborexia
Weborexia is what I and others would call an anorexic or overly thin layout. Thin layouts are beyond annoying to me mostly because they're typically never centered, which leaves about 1280 pixels of wasted space on the right side of my screen. Yes, my screen resolution is 1680 x 1050 pixels. Another thing that annoys me about an anorexic layout is that the font size is typically 7 or 8 point. The font color is probably painful to the eyes as well. Not only do I have to squint my eyes to see, but I have to highlight the text to read. In these cases, I don't bother because again, it's a waste of my time and life to do such a thing. If your site was worth the visit, you wouldn't inflict pain to my eyes.
Helpful Links:
» Do's and Don't's of Text Size and Colour
» Tutorialtastic
» W3 Schools
» Webmasters Behaving Badly: Weborexia
