What are your personal website pet peeves?

[ocean]

I'll add yet another voice to this discussion, but I also hate entrance pages, "Enter Site" buttons and the like. I already consented to viewing your website by typing in the url or clicking a link, why do I need to double consent? All this does is obscure the content and make it harder to archive the page.

I also think web pages not working on mobile devices is annoying. About 90% of the time I'm browsing websites on my computer, but it's frustrating to open something and it not work on my iPhone; knowing the CSS to do make it work would require probably two or three lines.

I wrote a little blog about this specifically:
https://oceanmew.com/blog/it-has-to-be-responsive/

[GlitchWolf47]

I also hate entrance pages, "Enter Site" buttons and the like. I already consented to viewing your website by typing in the url or clicking a link, why do I need to double consent?

People (including myself) do that in case of epilepsy or photosensitivity. Like, if I have my site linked on somewhere like tumblr and someone who has epilepsy clicks it and doesn't know it's covered in eyestraining blinkies and graphics they could get a seizure. I understand where you're coming from a bit tho if the website DOESNT have anything like that, just seems counterproductive at that point (or if the landing page has eyestrain graphics then its kinda pointless)

[solaria]

A few of mine were already covered, but heres two I haven't seen mentioned yet:

Fixed scrolling - When I scroll down and it yanks me back up, or yanks me further down than where I actually scrolled to. This genuinely pisses me off. I stopped scrolling where I wanted to for a reason. Why are you forcing scroll positions? Why are certain positions "right" and not the rest?

Justified text - this is a minor annoyance, definitely not as severe as the scrolling one, but does put me off. It's simply hard for me to read due to the uneven spacing between words, and since each line ends at the same spot, its harder for me to keep track of which line I'm on (I have minor dyslexia).

And now to points other people covered!

Entrances:

I find entrances (or whatever they're called) to often serve as no more than a roadblock which makes you look for the entrance button, then to wait again for the actual home page to load

If your site has content that warrants a warning but it's NOT a big part of your website overall, put that warning where the problematic content is! Not on the splash page!

long animations and transitions

I've definitely come across splash pages where I was hunting for the entrance link! I just want to see your site!! I have nothing against splash pages but I rarely actually read them ^^; and do find it silly when the warnings are more severe than the content. What really annoys me is entrance animation, like Skykristal said. I don't mind when I first visit a site, as I understand it is to give off a certain atmosphere and be an artistic touch, but I hate having to wait for the entrance animation every time I visit, it just gets old and annoying.

also, that flickering old TV effect that is overlayed onto the entire page, and there's no way to disable it!

Yes! I used to notice this more a few years ago, it seems the CRT effects people use are much more subtle and easier on the eyes now. The flickering and scrolling lines used to be bad.

[jack_dawlia]

I generally think people can do kinda whatever on a site, if i really dont like I can click away!

I'm very guilty of much of the pet peeves people have listed here but oh well, gives me ways to improve in the future :P

a few things that annoy me are

• All images on a site being devoid of alt text, makes your site less accessible for people using screen readers and if youre using an external image hoster (like imgur.. as a uk resident i cannot view any site with imgur images TwT) and it goes down your users don't know what the image is meant to be </3
• on that note as well people using alt text for things it isnt meant for - like image credits
• and also people not crediting! a lot of people recognise that there isnt really a search engine on the indie web and the main way to find people is through linking, so it makes me sad when people have loads of graphics or use a template and dont link to who made them :(
• a more minor one is the weird animosity towards mobile users it feels like some people have? I dont think theres anything wrong for having your website built for your computer and your computer alone, but i sometimes get the vibe that some people are a little antagonistic towards people who are on the indie web on their phone - like not everyone has a computer yknow? idk
• not optimising image sizes
• and finally one that is completely personal taste is people naming pages vague things, this is speaking mostly as a webring host, sometimes im trying to find here the widget is kept and end up having to check every page on a site cuz i cant figure out what they mean TwT and also people hiding their webring widget pls make them easy to find

[sloth_army1]

Recently I've spent a lot of time browsing websites just by going through webrings, and it is kind of annoying to me how many of them you have to go searching for. I'm fine if it's on your main page, or if you have a clearly labeled page for your webrings or links, but I've seen a lot of websites where I go through the whole site looking at all of their stuff only to realize that I never once saw the webring I know they are a part of and I have to go on a scavenger hunt finding it.

I'm definitely guilty of some of the things pointed out here. Basically every image on my website is bigger than it should be. I also should really look into more readable fonts for different parts of my website, because right now it is not very accessible for people with dyslexia.

[dogbrain]

a more minor one is the weird animosity towards mobile users it feels like some people have? I dont think theres anything wrong for having your website built for your computer and your computer alone, but i sometimes get the vibe that some people are a little antagonistic towards people who are on the indie web on their phone - like not everyone has a computer yknow? idk

i noticed this too!!! i'm so glad you pointed this out.... i mostly see lighthearted ribbing rather than genuine malice, but it does put me off when i see the latter. i understand wanting your site to be viewed the way it was intended, but you gotta remember over 50% of people browse the net with their phones nowadays to me, that alone makes it more than worth doing the bare minimum to make your site mobile-accessible (which, often, is as easy as including <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> between your head tags!)

[Memory]

Funny, I was actually typing out a rant earlier about how so much of the indie web is inaccessible in many forms (specifically about sites where content is blocked by divs and images and hard to access. If I can zoom out and see all of the content, I still consider that to be accessible). Like, I primarily use my laptop, but if I'm at work, I'll use my phone, and many sites are unintelligible on mobile.

Really, the big pet peeve I have is the flashing lights and images. I'm not epileptic, nor am I photosensitive, but so many sites give me a headache when I visit them.

[fairyrune]

this was a really interesting thread to read. i'm personally guilty of many of these sins, but either 1) it's not content that is required to view the site, like my scrolling badges on my index page, or 2) it's something i'm already working on, like mobile accessibility. that being said, a few of you have made me think a bit differently about how i want to design things going forward.

for me the biggest thing is not just mobile inaccessibility, but the outward hostility that @jack_dawlia mentioned. a while ago i read this blog post, and though i'd been intending to make my site responsive for a while, it really pushed me to do so ASAP. i saw a discussion on another site where someone said they wanted to intentionally make their site inaccessible on mobile because "the point is to simulate the old web, therefore people should browse on desktop". i thought about this blog post again then.

i wouldn't consider any of my accessibility concerns pet peeves. it's not a "pet peeve" if i can't access the upper floors of a building without exhausting myself, after all...

another thing is that people who own personal sites are just people who own personal sites; they don't necessarily align themselves with old/indie web philosophies. with that in mind, stuff like social media links and "corporate design" are things that make me think "not my cup of tea" and that's that.

a real pet peeve of mine is when people host their images on something like catbox for no discernible reason. generally image files are not going to be so large and numerous that you'll need to do this. and if they are really taking up so much space, there's better places to do it that give you full edit access to those images even after they've been uploaded.

by the way, at least on firefox-based browsers, if you hit CTRL+SHIFT+M, you get to see how the page looks on a pretty wide variety of devices + you're able to input your own dimensions. very handy!

[Dynaknights]

Kind of weird, but I have a distaste for when a site has little to no content outside of social media links along with a bunch of linked basic web dev tutorials and such. It's not that I have a problem with providing resources for web dev, of course. It's just 1) what if someone is looking for intermediate and advanced web dev resources instead and 2) it sometimes sounds like 'making a website is the new retro and niche thing to do,' especially if the webmaster's own site hasn't been updated in a long while/is stricken by terminal 'under construction'-itis on every page except the 'about me' and index.

I cite this one specifically because I see quite a few sites that offer little but these, not even aesthetics or anything. But it's not the worst issue in the world.

Also, chatboxes. I don't usually have an issue with them -- especially on sites with less traffic -- but I think webmasters should at least keep a stern eye on them before they're faced with a colorful litany of slurs or other derogatory/generally hateful language as I've seen out and about.
I'm certain this happens with guestbooks, too, but I find that chatboxes provide less formality than guestbooks do (like a forum post versus a social media post), which is probably why they're nearly always the victims of this...

[Valery_04]

The awful contrast between the background and the text in some (mostly kawaiicore) aesthetic pages, we people with sensitive eyesight and visual disabilities exists and must handle how painful is that selection of colors.

Another thing I find annoying are theses sites that don't have anything illegal but they look like these snuff/real sensitive content pages that existed between late 90s and early 2000s, I adore their combination of red and black but the structures annoy me and make me don't enter because my brain thinks unvoluntarily that they're suspicious. 

[Noah_S]

Full page covering modals that open by scrolling. I'll be reading something, and suddenly my browser is covered by a modal asking me to enter my email address and name and address and date of birth and social security number and bank info and name of my first pet and...

Okay, not quite at that level (yet) but it sure feels like it when they interrupt to ask for info to use to keep bothering me.

[Cyan]

Fixed scrolling - When I scroll down and it yanks me back up, or yanks me further down than where I actually scrolled to. This genuinely pisses me off. I stopped scrolling where I wanted to for a reason. Why are you forcing scroll positions? Why are certain positions "right" and not the rest?

Oh gods yes, any kind of scroll-jacking is an immediate nope in my book. Absolutely not. 🙅

I'd also like to add poorly designed custom cursors.
I don't mind custom cursor in general, they can look cute and add to a site's personality, but I dislike when the graphic used is round or in other ways not shaped to have a clearly distinct "point" or corner to show where the cursor's edge is. Makes clicking things unwieldy and frustrating because I keep missing the right area. At least make it have some kind of arrow-like feature so I can see where I click.

[poesu]

Anti-Nazi banners/88x31 buttons. Like, the first thing I see is a Nazi symbol... and only then my brain parses the "anti-" part (it's crossed out or something). Weirds me out every time. The intention is good, I understand, but the execution is somewhat of a bummer.

[eSatisfire]

So this is gonna be first-hand, because these annoy me about my own website:

Long loading time. I'm involved in a project that has to load literally THOUSANDS of pictures for the user to be available at any point, which takes a couple of seconds to load. It's not 'frustrating' so much as just 'boring'. I go on my own website and it's either taking some time before the crucial elements load, or, worse!, I get some screen that says "loading" or smth. That's like all these websites checking if you're not a bot or greeting you with a captcha: so so so vexatious.

Also just in general the balance between accessibility, simplicity etc., meaning: too much stuff is overwhelming, but too little can be just as confusing (it can also misrepresent what the website is about). I sorta think how you resolve it is partly by aesthetics: if there's a section of buttons that're supposed to be links to other parts of the website, then they probably should be in some well-visible spot but not necessarily too coloristic: they're there for when you need them, but they shouldn't steal your attention when you don't. But it's such a difficult thing to gauge.

Also, thematic consistency is what I struggle with. When I get it right it's so satisfying and I'm afraid to break it by adding more lol but when I can't pinpoint what I'm going for, or when I'm going for multiple things at the same time, it's easy to tell and I peeve myself into a designer's corner.

[ashton]

Some of my annoyances on the internet are:

- Custom mousepointers. I sometimes cannot see where my mousepointer is, because they are so small.

- Music players. Especially those that autoplay. (I have SCM music player blocked with uBlock Origin.

- Nekocat, (or whatever it is called) that annoying white creature following your mousepointer.

- Forced subtitles

omg. this is super petty and low stakes but i really do hate that nekocat LOL. it always feels like it's in the way of whatever i'm trying to click on so now i have to send it on a wild goose chase around the website to get it out of my way. i'm just trying to click on links!! begone!!

another thing-that-might-just-annoy-me is vague content warnings. appreciate the thought but "may contain triggering topics" is, like. extremely general. that could mean anything. you can't tell me to "curate my online experience" and then not tell me what i'm supposed to be curating for