What are your personal website pet peeves?

[Memory]

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.

This is often done to work around Neocities' file type restrictions. You can technically use Base64 encoding to embed the files into your HTML, but the inflated file sizes and (especially) just simply the pain of dealing with massive blocks of raw data becomes an utter pain.
I absolutely agree on file optimization. You don't need to go as far as using AVIF or WebP, but simply resizing images or using JPEG (especially using the jpegli encoder) goes a massive way to help with load times. If you want to host insane resolution images, it's best make hyperlinks to them instead of embedding them into the page, or perhaps look into progressive JPEGs or JPEG-XL (though JPEG-XL has pretty poor support among browsers).

[Memory]

When it comes to personal sites, 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. While these entrances can be useful if your website has sensitive content (especially on the home page), I often see them being used for innocuous sites which could at most be rated as 14+.
I'm pretty sure I hold this belief due to my involvement in other peripheral websites (Like Agora Road and Lainchan) whose userbases tend to lean more towards utilitarian design, and thus decide against including entrances. The case is the same for my site. It's entirely SFW, and has only minor vulgarity.

Unoptimized sites which rely on heavy Javascript frameworks (where you have to load tons of Javascript just to see text) or that have media that's way to large for it's display dimensions can also be a pain. These issues be a chore to browse for people with slow internet connections, slow hardware, alternative or outdated browsers (especially since most JS frameworks are targeted towards Chromium). Static site generators (Like Hugo or 11ty) are great alternatives to frameworks. Especially if your website's just a blog (Wordpress be damned).

And for the last of all, excessive use of marquee effects. Why not just have your content cover more than like, one line instead? That way you wouldn't have to wait an eternity just to see something you missed. There's a reason why you can scroll thru a web page, ya know?

[Loebas]

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

[crazyroostereye]

There are a few things that can get me somewhat annoyed.

My Pet peeves are:

• Autoplaying Sound/Video, but that usually gets blocked by my Browser anyways.
• Browser Restrictions, I hate when Websites block you because of a certain browser you are using, I can get that maybe Internet Explorar is a bit to old, but if I use modern day Firefox I damn well expect to be able to access the website.
• Bad or no scaling, I get that people can't optimize for every resolution. But if a website consists of a tiny square in centre when using standard 1080p and I have to zoom in, I am a bit annoyed.
• Legibility, I hate when the Text is to small and/or the colour is similar the Background making stuff unreadable. Also when you use alot of flashing Symbols, and Backgrounds can make it very hard to read the main Content.
• And Finally Navigation, I hate when Website have not working or 404ing Navigation entries. Also when Nav bar is not clearly distinguished from the Rest of the Content, and hard to find or there is not a Navigation on a Subpage. Atleast have a back button to the Main Page

[Blue]

My extremely specific annoyance is when links that lead outside the site (to somewhere else on the web, someone else's site or socials) do not open in a new window. I know I can just right-click and open it on my own, but it is a lot more convenient to just have it done by the webmaster.

On the same note, I sometimes see people do the opposite; every page on their website opens in a new window. Why?  This one is not that often an occurrence, but still.

[caby]

as far as the mainstream web goes, I just don't like most sites full stop. if it's irritating to use, scrolling around without my say so or loading in a bajillion ads, I'm not touching it out of principle. but in general I can't think of a site design I'm hugely fond of, certainly nothing I think I'd miss like I miss some older site designs. everything feels so monolithic now and you can barely tell where a screenshot came from that so many mainstream sites look exactly the same.

as far as the personal web goes what most often tests my patience is sites that are so decorated and animated and heavy that they lag out on my poor little laptop. I'm also not big on fancy css animation or page intros or anything like that, I'm way too easily distracted... otherwise sites that are just plain broken, where they've linked to a bunch of things on their homepage that they haven't actually built yet. it wastes my time because I will click all of those links and get disappointed every single time, lol

much agreed on sites that open links into new windows, or similarly sites that open pages within their own site in new tabs. this is especially aggravating on mobile as it's less obvious when you've opened into a new tab, and occasionally I'll be wandering happily around someone's site only to find I now have 50 tabs open, all of the same site. super not necessary!

[xwindows]

My extremely specific annoyance is when links that lead outside the site (to somewhere else on the web, someone else's site or socials) do not open in a new window. I know I can just right-click and open it on my own, but it is a lot more convenient to just have it done by the webmaster.

On the same note, I sometimes see people do the opposite; every page on their website opens in a new window. Why?  This one is not that often an occurrence, but still.

While I do share the same annoyance about the "every page on their website opens in a new window" part; I am actually opposed to webmasters meddling with this entirely (1), no matter that it was on-site or off-site links:

• Making a normal link (the kind that opens in current tab by default) open on a brand-new tab is as easy as using a single middle-click in most desktop browsers; no right-click menu was required.
  
  • Or Ctrl+click, if your mouse/touchpad lacks middle button.
  • Ctrl+Enter also works if you prefer keyboard.
• Conversely, opening link that webmaster explictly set `target="_blank"` in current tab on my desktop browser would actually require me to right-click and select the fourth context menu option.
  
  • Or pressing Menu, Down, Down, Down, Down; 5 keystrokes, when I'm on keyboard. And I'm on keyboard-only quite often with my laptop.

(1) The exception is scenario where user is in a middle of some sort of transaction/unsaved progress, and clicking a normal side-link would otherwise discard user's work; these would be ones appropriate to set `target="_blank"` on. For example: "open the cheat sheet" link in MelonLand forum's posting form.

[Malice]

Images that cover up text! I see it all the time in the indieweb and I have no idea why anyone would do that. Don't you want people to actually read what you wrote? I'm all for fun dollz and pngs of characters, but if it's blocking your about section, I'm out. It's even worse if it makes my computer slow down

[Skykristal]

Coming back to this thread to say something I've been experiencing over and over to the point it has become quite an annoyance to me.

Art websites that don't have a thumbnail gallery or general quick access to its content are extremely annoying to me. I check out artists because I'm curious to see their work. why are you hiding it?
In general most "galleries" I've seen are super annoying to use. Just a bunch of clickable titles, no categories on what to expect,  no organisation,  sometimes not even any content at all unless you dig really deeply into some random side menus that don't even look like one. Idk it's hard to describe but a lot of people make it as complicated as possible for no reason at all.
That and folks who don't know what a thumbnail is. 60x 6MB graphics on a page won't load. And they don't need to fill 90% of the page in an overview.
I wish more people would make usable, simple galleries that function normally. There are plenty of ideas, tutorials and resources for that. Melonforum gallery included.

[Memory]

...No? I think websites are for the individual and they can create it any way they see fit. I don't think I've ever seen a site and gone "ugh". Seeing this thread did kind of confuse me to be honest.

[AY38910]

BAD CONTRAST. BAD CONTRAST. BAD CONTRAST. BAD CONTRAST.
Also, bad kerning. Don't even get me started on bad kerning.

[zj]

I need to figure out how to turn off animations, I've been having a hard time using a CRT-like overlay I like - I think it's a cool effect, but I can't figure out how to get a button turning if off to work - it's a javascript thing, and at that I am garbage. I love the look of it, but I don't want it to make my site inacessible. I've posted about it here in the past but I haven't gotten the kind advice I received to work  I need to git gud, as they say, I'm just not sure where to start

[nipchip]

Just listing a small handful off the top of my head. :o

• Autoplay videos and audio. Can completely throws me off when it does something unexpected.
• Poor choice of size and colour contrast for text. Reading is infinitely more difficult when the text is font size 10 and white on light blue background (squints).
• Text containers that are super wide. Reader fatigue is real when the text spans the entire browser window. (Rule of thumb I follow is roughly 80 characters per line.)
• Ignoring mobile responsive design. Don't mind so much the "best viewed on desktop", but responsiveness shouldn't be pushed aside.

I feel 2 and 3 are the most agregious to me haha

[Eunice]

People who use acronyms because they know what they are, so everyone else has to. What the fudge is a "dni"?

But my biggest pet peeve is light text on a dark background. Cannot read it, not without getting a migraine. I have enough trouble with magazine layout people which think they are so cool if they have dark backgrounds. I also cannot stand music playing as soon as I open a site. I like to either play my own, or have silence. (Or as much silence you can have when you have tinnitus.)

[Kalka]

Empty dead pages. Like the person started a few lines of code with ideas and all and... nothing. You just see "copyright 2015" or "last update 01-04-2021". I can't help but wonder about those people. Did they gave up ? Did something happen ? I'm not looking for a full site but seeing a lot of empty layouts and dead pages are mildy annoying.