What do you find annoying about websites?

[EdgyRabbit]

THis might be a me thing but websites that have a bunch of flashing lights and either 1. Dont warn you or 2. dont have a pause gifs button on their site (I would like to have one, anyone got the JS i can use to pause them?).

I dont know, it just bothers me because some people could die from flashing lights, and whenever a gif has flashing lights i just slow it down. Its super simple!

This is coming from me, someone who has migraines when being exposed to too many flashing lights.

[Skykristal]

• too much unnecessary junk squeezed in a small space. Mostly a thing in old website designs
• too much width for it's content. In defence though, it can be a bit tricky to fill space efficiently all the time. But when the site doesn't even try and has poor basic structure, I find it a bit tedious to consume it's content.
• long animations and transitions. The majority of the animated elements I stumble across are annoying rather than cool. I appreciate still websites
• broken links on an active website. I recently shopped soap products and none of the links to the new products on the homepage was linked correctly and mixed up or broken. NOT A SINGLE ONE. This is not the only website I experienced this on. And it's always important links, homepage highlights and categories. Seriously who is maintaining these. It's never fixed.
• overuse of box-shadow. MY LAPTOP DIES
• overuse of textures and background images, especially when a website has links, text and images on top of that.    Why.If you want people to engage, please make your site viewable. I can barely locate where to click

[randomtangent]

oh boy there's probably a lot that grinds me with websites.

• "this website requires cookies" (cannot leave popup until i allow so)
• slow as hell even if the website looks bland as hell (especially Microsoft and Google-based sites)
• overuse of box shadows i guess, they slow my PC a fair bit
• WebPs - i get they're good in theory and technically, but in practice they're just frustrating more than anything
• websites with mature or NSFW content without a content warning
• bright, flashing/strobing sites or too many flashing blinkies and things
• or the total opposite - a bland site with not much on it.

you know sites with little content but they take a FHD screen res just to render it without breaking? or something. it's really weird.
or more general - i could describe a form of sites i've noticed, like especially people who have a billion contacts and things, there's probably links to all their contacts maybe their real life name and selfie, but the rest of the site is plain. ???

okayy it's definitely not up for me to judge, but eh.

[AY38910]

Ads. Not the "PNG banner in the corner" kinda ads, but the "JS popup that covers the whole page" kinda ads.

[LILYWORLD]

People who have "link" pages, but instead of there being hyperlinks to other sites & cool things, it's just all of their different social medias- i wish they would label these pages as "contact me", instead of links. maybe it's a silly thing to be annoyed by, but i just like to explore and find interesting small web sites and feel slightly disappointed when a site has no links to others! 

also, that flickering old TV effect that is overlayed onto the entire page, and there's no way to disable it! it's just a very uncomfortable viewing experience!   

[Skykristal]

People who have "link" pages, but instead of there being hyperlinks to other sites & cool things, it's just all of their different social medias.

I agree fully! I've visited many link pages only to see social media links displayed. What I don't mind is a mix of both. I personally do this too, it's cleaner and easier. Or in the footer of a website for example. But I don't see the point in making a links page just for my socials. Its kinda disappointing to see when you hope to discover some great bookmarks or websites.

On the same note, lot's of links without categories. As much as I love discovering useful sites, when there are 50+ links without category or at least a tiny description I don't bother checking it out. Especially because most of the time the first few links I check out from lists like this are never useful to me personally so I don't bother continuing.

[Julie]

For me, it just depends on the severity...

Minor nitpicks would be the fonts being inconsistent when it comes to the text bodies. If its dependent on whether or not its the header compared to the body text, not much of an issue personally. Not mobile friendly sites for uncommonly visited sites are also minor, but it becomes more of an issue when it's a site that should have enough of a budget and time to test and deploy a mobile-version of the website.

Big players in what does urk me: small text font, font colors blend in with the background, text illegible. Sometimes not having a huge heads up on content warnings via splash pages for indie sites fall in this list but more along the lines of minor considering that I've been guilty of not having one at this point in time. Adverts that cover important part of the page is a big peeve of mine...

For regular sites, I notice a lot of these that restrict users and beg them to get a subscription. My guess is it's a byproduct of consumerism and some sprinkles of what I feel like is capitalistic views. I do understand that hosting a website costs a lot of money but not a lot of folks want to subscribe to something they'll only read once or twice a month/year. I sure as heck wouldn't do so. The anti-Ad-Blocker pop ups are my worst adversary. Main reason for using one in the first place is because the sudden onset of sound and slowdown happens as an ad starts playing. I still hear a few of those fake giveaway ads saying you won an expensive tech device from the early 2000s into 2010.
I disable my ad-blockers for no site.

I can understand the links/contacts being mixed in and the frustration that comes along with that. Not sure how else to mention the original person that brought it up, but otherwise not a lot of folks take it into account. If nothing else, having them separated by sections on the same page is a nice compromise.

[randomtangent]

For regular sites, I notice a lot of these that restrict users and beg them to get a subscription. My guess is it's a byproduct of consumerism and some sprinkles of what I feel like is capitalistic views. I do understand that hosting a website costs a lot of money but not a lot of folks want to subscribe to something they'll only read once or twice a month/year. I sure as heck wouldn't do so. The anti-Ad-Blocker pop ups are my worst adversary. Main reason for using one in the first place is because the sudden onset of sound and slowdown happens as an ad starts playing.

this exactly. especially on mobile it's almost predatory.

especially since i have iPhones and they're a few years old it can slow them down to a crawl, and you know ads that open even if you click the big X? the worst offenders.
it literally opens what the ad links to, but in some cases it just opens it in a new tab while i'm still on the original site i was on.

weirdly enough this crap is most common on article sites -- ads that are too big for 9:16 phones, anti-ad blocker popups (some you can't even leave), subscription popups (especially if it's just for reading the site itself) when i only wanna read a single article, and cookies that i'm forced to accept.