16 Things that Really Annoy Most Web Users

A survey has been done that finds out what web trends annoy people.

The least popular thing, pop up windows, doesn’t surprise me at all. I use FireFox so rarely get pop up ads, but if I visit a website that insists on popping a new full screen window I WILL close the window and not return, however interesting the content. There are very few sites that I think deserve that sort of attention.

I find it interesting that flash intros aren’t on the list. I hope that’s because people don’t use them any more rather than users now like them. Maybe it’s just the fact that ‘skip intro’ links seem to be standard so nobody has to even bother thinking about downloading a 3 meg splash page.

I’m guilty of the lack of contact information one as well, I don’t even have a mailto form… it’s on my to-do list.

My personal top ten would include (in no particular order)

• Full Screen Popups – just say no
• Eye blaster adverts – animated overlays on the actual page. Easily circumvented with the Adblock plugin, but could they be any more invasive?
• Free content requiring registration – BugMeNot, another Firefox plugin, to the rescue
• Flash Only Websites – For media heavy sites (film & video game promotion) these are fine, but in general they are a big no no
• Java – It makes the browser slow to a halt
• PDF – see Java.
• Disabling the right click menu with javascript – Not that common these days but incredibly annoying. Preventing me from ‘stealing’ with the right click menu is hugely ineffective to anyone but the least web savvy of people. There are always ways of grabbing content from the web, and a javascript blocker encourages people to find them.

In general there isn’t much that really annoys me about the web. I use Firefox plugins to ban/ disable the content I don’t care for so my web experience is generally quite pleasant.