Web Pet Peeves

I agree with the complete rant at J-Walk. Particularly:

2. Messing with the Back button

The Back button is there for a purpose -- to go back to where you came from. Just because you make it difficult for me to leave your site doesn't mean I'm going to spend more time there.

5. Playing music

Enough! If I want to listen to music while I surf the Web, I'll put on a CD or listen to a webcast. Nobody wants to hear your cheesy MIDI files.

10. Using a "splash screen"

What a waste of time. I didn't come to your site to see your logo. Why make me click again to get to the content? Or worse, make me sit through some worthless animation?

15. Using gratuitous background images

If you must have a background image on your Web page, use something simple that doesn't affect readability of the text. Please! Please! Please!

23. Mouse-overs

If something on your site changes when I move the mouse cursor on it, you can pretty much bet on the fact that I find it annoying. OK, changing the color of hyperlinks is an exception to this rule. But changing the text size of the hyperlinks is a sure sign that that site was designed by a moron.

32. Bad color combinations

As a web designer, you can control the text color and the background color. It seems that some designers go out of their way to make text as difficult as possible to read. Dark text on light backgrounds is the best. Light text on dark backgrounds gets annoying very quickly. Putting dark text on a dark background is a sign of a brain-dead designer.

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