Least Favorite Website Elements

With having the post "What's your favourite web design trend?" I was surprised that this one hadn't come up, mainly so designers can look over things to know what to avoid when designing their websites. I, myself, have quite a few. ;)

-Headers that make me scroll down on my 1280x1024 monitor to see the content.
-People who color the background black, but will leave links uncolored, 255 blue.
-Use of animated gifs (I'm slightly ADD, so this is very distracting)
-Not taking into account that your text may not be readable on some places with your chosen background
-Use of "cute" but hard to read fonts
-Use of obnoxiously bright colors, especially on dark backgrounds (AHH! MY EYES)
-Use of a sidebar that scrolls with the page AND covers part of the text, so I'm forced to collapse it to read the content on the site.

RPG sites in particular
-Not listing what characters are currently played or what positions are needed
-Not saying what year your game takes place in
-Not making it clear how to join on the site

 

One trend that I find extremely annoying is side-scrolling pages and "slide show" type articles. I think a lot of sites went with the slideshow article so they could just load more adds or something. That's something that I believe needs to just go away.

 

Yeah, that trend is very annoying. Doubly so when the scripts that are supposed to slide you to the next page fails. While I can see wanting to reduce the amount of data/page for people who have slower connections, those sites don't do that. They just reduce the amount of actual content/page and STILL end up with long load times.

 

Hovers for everything - especially unmarked hovers. I dislike having to play hide and seek with information I'm looking for and sometimes people make them so slow that it takes forever for everything to process. I like the idea of interactivity on the website, but there's a point where I think other things can be utilized more effectively.

 

I had forgotten about that one! There seems to be a new fad going on, especially over at JCINK forums, where they'll have a hover over their main banner to get more information. I've always expected that banner to give me a link to the index, not to give me more information that should really be on its own page or website.

 

It's been a trend with JCINK for at least 2 years now, but it goes against everything I was ever taught to do as a designer. :D

I will also never understand the 8px or less font size trend.

 

It's not trendy unless everyone over 15 can't read it.

 

Not to mention all the cursive fonts that are impossible to read.

 

I'll still take those over anything in comic sans. ¬.¬

 

Then, perhaps, you need to see some of the cursive fonts people use. ;)

Oh! I thought of some more:
-Having links change size on hover.
-Use of a cute bottom-border on hover, but not making a transparent one normally, so it causes all your other links to jump a bit when you hover.
-Assuming that everyone has the same size monitor as you, so you force me to scroll horizontally to read all the text.

 

I will forever maintain that there is no worse font than comic sans, but I'll allow that there are plenty that are harder to read.

OMFSM, those hover fx for links that shift everything around. Hate so much. And yeah, anyone who designs to a fixed width... May they always find their pasta overcooked.

Really annoying is when someone doesn't set their base background and font color, but assume everyone has black text on white background, then designs graphics for it that are just these white boxes around a shape, and you know they wanted it to look like it was transparent on the background.

 

itty bitty teeny weenie text!

 

If it moves when I scroll, I hate it. Both as a professional graphic designer and as a front-end website user.

 

There are times this can be handy, such as wanting only a certain portion of a header to be visible at all times (like a menu at the top that is designed to be bigger when you first load the page, but becomes minimalistic when you scroll). However, that being said, those social media "sidebars" that will not only follow you when you scroll, but often cover up part of the text, I wish those would die in a fire. Put it in an easily accessible place, such as a menu or the footer. Don't make us feel like we have to like/follow/etc you.

 

If they were only visible on desktop/laptop and there was a big enough margin they didn't cover text, they'd be fine, but so many people put them on mobile sites and I usually get so mad at them I don't finish whatever I came to the site to read.

 

That's simply not realizing that mobile users have a smaller screen, and poor website design. Unfortunately, there are a lot of bad "webmasters" out there, who for some unknown reason, think 255 blue looks GREAT on a black background, or that super bright colors is a good thing and makes the text stand out, not that it makes it impossible to read.

 

Oh, you don't have to tell me about bad design. I work in a print shop, and some of the things I've had to print... *shakes head* Some people clearly only have taste in their mouth.

 

I don't mine a "snap-to-top" type menu bar. What I'm talking about is stuff like Energis. Everything moves for no practical purpose, and in some cases if the motion were to glitch or malfunction the end-user won't have a menu. I had to build that for a client. This was the level of over-activity that I talked them down to.

 

How many keyboards did you go through from the tears you had to pour out for that one? And how many monitors did you break wanting to punch out the design? lol

But I agree that things like that are annoying, I hadn't realized /that/ was exactly what you were talking about. It makes me cry looking at it.

 

I accidentally broke a mouse when I threw it one day, and it took rolls of paper towel to handle the tears, but the dogs liked the walks I kept going on to blow off steam. It's a miracle I didn't put my head through my desk during that build.