Does anyone have personal website pet peeves?

[Memory]

To play devil's advocate, HTTPS protects users from MITM attacks by bad actors looking to inject anything from obtrusive advertisements to literal malware into victims' web pages when they are served over plain HTTP. This has already happened on several different occasions, and it's not unreasonable to assume that, given the opportunity, bad actors will use code injection attacks as a means of extracting as much revenue as possible from their victims.

You're right with these things, but I think it would be more important to secure the browser itself. The root problem is the browser executing code (JavaScript, Flash, ActiveX for example). If code execution would be restricted or even prohibited completly in the first place, lots of those problems of unencrypted traffic become irrelevant. Intrusive ads should be destroyed on other fronts, if you ask me (filter lists and script blocking for example). Though I remember a man-in-the-middle attack, where website text was altered to give things a different meaning. That's evil indeed and hard to discover. However if the encryption certificate is compromised or decrypted (beware of superfast computers out there), it's rather a false sense of security that comes with the "S" of HTTPS. So no guarantees unfortuneatly.

[TheNothingMonster]

Oh man, my site falls under some of the categories mentioned here. I agree with a lot of points and I will consider everyone's opinions while working!

My sins:

1) JavaScript as Foundation: My site requires a browser with JavaScript enabled or otherwise it will not work at all. That is due to some "shortcuts" I have taken while coding. I would have used PHP instead if Neocities supported it.
2) Not Sharing Buttons: I am one of those who showcase their 88x31 buttons but have not linked anyone else back in return. That is because I have yet to make an "external links" page! I have gathered a lot of buttons from others and I really want to add them some time. ^^
3) Screen Adaptability: Thanks to my wonky CSS skill set, my site sometimes works on smaller screens and mobiles... and sometimes it doesn't.

My pet-peeves:

1) Autoplay: I also have an issue with autoplay, especially if there have not been any warnings prior and the sound is very loud and sudden. I get spooked!
2) Text Size: I refuse to read tiny text for my eyes' sake. :P
3) Pop-ups: While browser pop-ups might be informative, I find them quite annoying. I have come across instances where pop-ups were used as warnings on index/home pages, which were useful at first, but became a bit frustrating to deal with once you have to load/visit the page over and over again.
4) Dead Ends: Unfinished pages or links that get you into 404 pages, especially without an indicator. I do not have a problem in most scenarios, unless the entire site consists of non-existent, "Under Construction" or "Work In Progress" pages.

Stuff I do not mind that much:

1) Carrd-like Sites: It's their site. I cannot tell them what to do. Though, I have got to admit that it takes the fun out of web creation if the code is copy+pasted. If they made it themselves, sure! I don't care!
2) No Meat, Just Decoration: I do not mind seeing sites that are just aesthetic without much context to rely on. I think they are really beautiful in some cases. It is a different approach to most common personal sites. Again, they can do whatever they want with their site.

These are some subjects I could think about for now.

[cynderthekitsune]

i have probably wayy too many strong opinions on personal sites aah (;>_<)
though, these are just a few of them:

• a website is too hefty for it's own good (like too much JavaScript or weird CSS stuff). my PC isn't super powerful, and it's kinda old now, plus my internet isn't great either; ends up crashing my whole browser.
• images being gigantic or not properly optimised (like, a simple image takes megabytes? why?)
• super flashy sites, especially since they overstimulate me a ton
• seeing uncensored (or at least no splash screen) sites, i think you know what i mean by this.

eh it's fine though. it's just annoying seeing these, but half the time i assume they're pretty new to HTML/CSS/etc, so it usually slides fine :P

i think assuming they're just new is better than assuming they're something real nasty, though.

[Semper]

Most of my peeves are tied to accessibility, such as:

• A moving background. I cannot stand a background that moves, and not like small movements like sparkles or the raindrops that add ambience to the Melonland forum (though if they get too flashy I have a hard time staying on the page), I mean a background that just glides across the page, like those dang diagonal moving checkered backgrounds I've seen quite a few people in the web revival have on their website.
• Text on a heavily patterned background, especially if the text is very thin and delicate. I have decent eyesight (I can get by fine without glasses) and I cannot read stuff like that, so I cannot imagine who has such laser perfect sight to read something like that.
• The webmaster has disabled the browser's reader mode. I can usually put up with this if the site is easy to read on its own, but if it has the above issues and I cannot mitigate them with reader mode it makes it feel like the webmaster is doing this with malicious purpose.
• Also I echo @cynderthekitsune I am annoyed by personal sites that have too much to load. My computer isn't quite so old and has a decent amount of ram, but I have still come across web revival sites that get its fan going. Also, as an artist I am irked by other artists who upload big image files that sometimes takes a full minute to render on the page. I KNOW these files don't need to be that big, my goodness. Go drop them into TinyPNG, please.
• Oh and one more thing, when people save their files to an image hosting site like catbox when the images are already so very small that the webmaster could have just hosted it on their site's server. I find a lot of people rely on offsite image hosting even though most of these static site hosts have more than enough space for whatever is on their small personal sites. I've said it before, but I'm a visual artist that has uploaded a majority of my art to my site and I haven't even touched 1GB let alone the 50BG I get from a paid Neocities plan. I don't get why people need to host on something like catbox. It makes their sites load needlessly slow because its grabbing data from a different server OR all the images are broken because the image host either deleted their stuff of is down.

Behold, my peeves.

[fawn]

I learned a lot from this thread and also agreed a lot with this thread!

I'm wondering if my site falls in to the tiny text problem, I also get frustrated when a font is too small to read and just because I don't struggle with the smallness of the font I'm using doesn't mean somebody else won't, but at the very least it's zoom-friendly for now!

Autoplay stresses me out. I'm very sensitive to sound and even if I'm prepared with a warning it will almost always startle me regardless because it's the same as waiting for a toaster to pop for me.
Aesthetically I love "container" sites, sites where we're sitting in the middle of the page and everything is in it's own little box, however I can find it frustrating to read large walls of text or have to scroll within a box just to view a full image.
I also agree on all of the accessibility points, but being very new to this skill myself and just barely figuring out what I'm doing to get the basics out there, I can empathise with smaller sites not being fully accessible as I would be a hypocrite if I felt any other way about it. I'm in this middle ground of allowing myself to take my time with learning what I need to do for maximum accessibility, while also keeping it on the backlog as I would hate for somebody to not be able to enjoy visiting my site just because I was too stubborn to learn a new part of a new skill. At the end of the day my site is something that is for me and sharing it is just the cherry on top so I try to cut myself some slack with the progress I'm making and the rate at which I'm making it, but with every view count that gets added to the homepage the more I'm reminded that it's important to start thinking about making these changes sooner rather than later.

[Eunice]

I cannot read light coloured text on a dark background. For one thing, it gives me migraine. (It's the same with magazines printed like that.) And as I have the beginning of macular degeneration, that makes it worse.

[KiwiMeowo]

• Non-semantic HTML: Ever since I learned that you don't need div tags for everything in your website layout, coding felt a lot easier to manage. Non-semantic HTML still has some use, but it seems silly to me to have "<div class="header">" instead of "<header>".

Oh I actually made that mistake ahahah ^w^; When I first started my website, I wasn't aware of tags like <header> and <section>. And when I learnt more, I made too many pages already and don't want to change them one by one. However, when I make new website designs, I use semantic HTML tags now!

Oh a big one I thought though of; scrolling badge sections! Where people have their site badges in a marquee, so you have to sit there and wait in order to see all the sites badges they have. I think that's really disrespectful because it makes it so much harder for people to see the badges; its a bit like saying "I don't really care about these badges I just have them as decoration"

I remember using marquee for the buttons/badges. I originally wanted to optimize my sidebar space so I used this tag. But then I realised how inconvenient it is to navigate the buttons.

Mine is Autoplay...

It can get kind of annoying when I´m listening to music/podcast and then I open this site and it blares music.

Like just make it optional. you don´t need autoplay.

Oh I don't like it either, especially when there is no warning, sometimes the autoplay music is extremely loud and it scares me badly :(

Stuff I do not mind that much:

1) Carrd-like Sites: It's their site. I cannot tell them what to do. Though, I have got to admit that it takes the fun out of web creation if the code is copy+pasted. If they made it themselves, sure! I don't care!
2) No Meat, Just Decoration: I do not mind seeing sites that are just aesthetic without much context to rely on. I think they are really beautiful in some cases. It is a different approach to most common personal sites. Again, they can do whatever they want with their site.

While I saw multiple people here expressed their frustration on Cardd/pure-aesthetic sites, and I have somewhat similar feelings (I feel sad when I can't read their extremelong long rambling on their fav media), I feel it is their choice whether they just want to use websites to advertise their social media, or just make a pretty page. Like you mentioned, it is their sites.

I used to use Carrd to introduce myself as well, but because of its limitations (and a friend recommending Neocities), I decided to build a website instead. And gradually, I realised the freedom HTML gives me. So I have the hope that people who made a Carrd website will realise they could do much more than brief intros.

Although I enjoy website with thousand words long essays, the pure-aesthetic website can be seen something like an painting. While you can't read it like a long book, it is still pretty to look at, and perhaps the webmaster also took a long time and effort to make them? Yea I think they're cool.

It isn't a pet peeve, but more of something I wish more people would do. I sometimes look at websites on mobile. Most of the websites I come across are not mobile-friendly, which I can understand, as it can be a bit difficult to reformat the design to the mobile screen. Even if the website is not designed for mobile, I believe there is a way for the webpage to have the same look as desktop but shrunken. For some websites however, the layout would get messed up so badly, the content will get squished up and become impossible to view/navigate.[/list]