Another year without a nomination for a Webby Award. I’ll try to live with my disappointment. At least I’ve been interviewed by the same website as one of the nominees. And he doesn’t even have pictures of cool old supermarkets on his site…
All the same, it’s time for my occasional rant about web design developments I hate. This is mainly because, once again, I don’t really have anything much to say tonight…
Guaranteed to make me run away from your site in a hurry:
- Any sound file which doesn’t give me the option of whether or not to hear it, especially stupid MIDI files which sound like a little old lady sitting at the organ store in some 1975 shopping mall.
- Numerous multiple Javascript windows which launch all over the place for no other apparent reason than to prove “it’s possible”. There are good reasons for multiple windows only about 15% of the time they’re used, I’ll estimate.
- Use of full-size graphics, re-sized in HTML as “click here” thumbnails. What is the point of thumbnails if you have to download the full-size image anyway? You might as well just skip the thumbnail page and o for a slide show instead.
- Sites designed on Winblows machines using microscopic text which is only legible on other Winblows machines with their big, clunky screen fonts. Particular annoyance: badly-written stylesheets which don’t respond when you try to make the type bigger.
- Sites which tell me which screen resolution (browser, etc.) to use.
- Specific frame or ASP sites which make it all but impossible to bookmark any individual page or piece of information.
- Sites which you can’t navigate without the use of marginally-functional plug-ins, Javascript, or Java applets. Flash too. These technologies are great, but anyone who would make a site totally dependent upon them is way too willing to write off a lot of potential visitors.
Maybe in the next day or two, I’ll do my own awards for good design. And maybe a few for bad design as well. It won’t happen tomorrow, though, because I’ll be earning the rent doing some good design of my own…
