Bad Web Page Layouts

[HYHYBT]

Specifically, or at least the one that got me annoyed enough to post: News articles, blogs, etc with no left margin. Doesn't happen a lot, but I've been seeing more and more of it, and it's hard to read because it *looks* like there's more just off the left side of the page, only there's not. Why would anyone design a page that way? It's not like the extra pixels (even five would do it) would cost them anything at all.

[Andara Bledin]

Oooh.... I despise this. There's just absolutely no excuse for not having some margin on both sides to indicate that there really isn't anything being cut off.

^-.-^

[Lace Neil Singer]

What I hate is webpages that have videos/music playing automatically when you click which can't be switched off or muted. -.-

[muses_nightmare]

If the layout of a web page is particularly bad it takes me all of 3 seconds to leave it. If you can't make it easy for me to find my way around your site then there's not point of me being on your site. There are certain layouts of online stores that drive me insane, especially ones where the images are teeny tiny and you can't enlarge them. Sorry but I'm not buying something if I can't zoom in and check it out first.

[Andara Bledin]

Unskipable videos before you get to the real page.

Bonus points if they take forever to load. >_<

^-.-^

[blas87]

I hate those too, especially the "Congratulations, you're the millionth visitor to this webpage! Please stay on this page to claim your free Ipad!"

[protege]

I'm no fan of shitty web pages, or even ads for that matter.

What I *hate* though, are some of the things that I've seen douche bags (either "webmasters" or hosting companies) put on their pages.

Such as some types of ads. I understand that sponsors or banners help pay for webpages. If they're not intrusive, no problem. However, quite a few advertisers choose to annoy the ever living fuck out of their viewers.

Seriously, is it really necessary to pop up a huge ad over the entire page? Such things are not only annoying, but in many cases, you can't close the fucking things. You're being forced to sit through some cheesy sales pitch, instead of the page that you're trying to read. I don't know about the rest of you, but companies that piss me off like that have just *guaranteed* that I'll never use their product or service.

OK, now that I've droned on about ads...how about something else?

What about people who pick the loudest backgrounds they can find. It's jarring as hell to have to try to read text against that! I was always told that you're supposed to 'mute' the background--it's not supposed to take attention away from whatever the product or article is. Also, the more colors you put in a background, the more difficult it is to read text against it.

While we're talking about pictures, here's something else that's annoying. Specifically, photo galleries. It's all well and good that you want to show off your riced-out Honda. However, could you do one little thing first? Instead of posting huge (high-resolution) photos everywhere, why not put some thumbnails up there? Oh, and make sure the thumbnails aren't the same high-res crap resized to be smaller. That's just annoying. Make them low-res, and be done with it.

This last one isn't as common as it once was. I'm talking about the assholes who create a 1x1 pixel background...and then tile it. Seriously? What's wrong with a plain background? Simple and to the point.

[HYHYBT]

Unskipable videos before you get to the real page.

Bonus points if they take forever to load. >_<

^-.-^

Double bonus if the page making noise, stoppable in theory or not, is one of the 50+ tabs I have open and I cannot tell which one.

Speaking of which, does anyone know the purpose of designing your page to jump itself to the foreground? I opened it; that means I had intended to look at it, in turn... but in the meantime, I was already reading something else and now your page is in the way.

I've also occasionally run across sites that override the command-click's sending the new page to a separate tab; by doing so, all you've succeeded in doing is making it less likely that I finish the first page. And why would you want to do that? Surely you wanted that content looked at? (What I mean, in case that isn't clear, is that instead of opening in a new tab, it treats it as a regular click and replaces the current page.)

A site I'd otherwise visit directly that does these things, I can easily avoid... but I make heavy use of RSS feeds for Google News searches, and it takes several times before I'll remember the name of a site that causes trouble, much less recognize the name *before* going to it.

This last one isn't as common as it once was. I'm talking about the assholes who create a 1x1 pixel background...and then tile it. Seriously? What's wrong with a plain background? Simple and to the point.

I expect that's not assholery, but inexperience. If you don't know the correct way to set a solid background color, or perhaps even that there *is* one, but you do know how to set a tiled image...

[Lachrymose]

Somehow reminds me of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7otDLzQCug