Driving down the information
superhighway should be an enjoyable experience. The road surface should be
smooth, adequate amenities must be provided, and the scenery should be pleasant
and diverse. Of course sometimes on the internet it feels less like you’re
driving down a carefully constructed autobahn but rather riding a rickety
stagecoach down a rutted dirt track. Since this analogy has been stretched much
further than it should have (arguably since the word ‘amenities’) I’ll get to
the point, and say that what follows is a list of my pet peeves when it comes
to website features and design. It should be noted that I am not a
programmer or developer, so I have absolutely no handy tips on how to actually
banish these things or come up with more attractive alternatives to make the
internet a better place. But I'm going to absolve myself of that responsibility
because when it comes to the online world I’m usually like Ned Flanders,
striving to engage positively with my digital neighboureenos while blissfully overlooking
their more shameful qualities. Consider this post my uncharacteristic outburst,
in which I unleash years of repressed rage and tear down all those that stand
in my way of online enjoyment.
I’m convinced that the embedded auto-playing video was conceived in the underground lair of an evil super villain called Antinet. It was probably the invention that drove him mad trying to perfect, and when he first demonstrated it to his underlings even they were convinced that he’d finally gone too far. I just can't fathom the idea behind auto-playing videos. Either we want to watch the video or we don’t. Everybody understands that the big sideways triangle is the play button and that if you press it things start to happen. Until that button is pressed, however, we have the right to expect that the video will sit silently until called upon. The worst part about these videos is that if you’re not paying attention then you don’t realise it’s going to auto-play. Cue scenes of mild hysteria as you’re halfway down the page reading the content you actually visited the site for and the video starts playing, invariably at maximum volume. To make it worse, nine times out of ten the thing that starts playing isn’t even a video related to the site content but an ad, leading to the upsetting experience of having an article on the conflict in the Middle East being accompanied by the Masterfoods jingle.
The next thing is so stupid that
as far as I’m aware it doesn’t even have a proper name. For now I’ll call it
the ‘pre homepage’. You know what I mean - you try and visit a website and
instead you get a virtual lobby, which is either simply a picture or more usually a space for the site to flog whatever gratuitous product they need to get
rid of. You are then invited (in various sizes of lettering, ranging from minuscule to GINORMOUS) to 'Enter Site'; as if the website is now doing
you a massive favour by providing the actual thing you
requested in the first place. The whole thing is a total waste of time, and is
akin to inviting a friend round and then having them sit momentarily in a
cardboard box in your front yard before letting them in the door.
Here are some examples of what I’m
talking about.
In fact, that second one may be one
of the worst designed sites in the world. Aside from the hideously long fade-in
loading sequence, note how nothing appears to be a working link, yet you can click
on any of the various words listed and you will be directed to a page that appears vaguely
related to the thing you clicked. As far as I’m concerned, anything that is
a link must somehow appear different to other website content, whether by
having the cursor change to a little hand, or highlighting or becoming underlined
when you roll over it.
While we're on the subject of basic
site navigation, make sure you design your site with an easily accessible way
to get back to the home page, like a big banner at the top or convenient links
at the bottom - particularly if your site encourages you to go for
a stroll through multiple pages of content, like a photo gallery. There's
nothing worse than finding yourself in the depths of a website only to discover
that your only way out is to click the back button a zillion times or (more
often) simply not bother visiting the homepage again. And if you do provide a
button back to the homepage, for god’s sake please direct it back to the actual
homepage and not the pre homepage.
Comment sections are virtual
chocolate. Everybody knows that too much is bad for you, but a small indulgence
now and then makes you feel so good it’s hard to stay away forever. The best
part of comment sections are the completely pointless but oh so vitriolic
debates which may or may not be related to the video/article in question. Of
course, it’s incredibly hard to follow the thrilling action when the website
designer provides no easy way for you to find the comment/s which started the
debate. This leads to infuriating situations where you come across something
like “Brocolli12 is an ignorant, racist, homophobic JERK!” which naturally forces
you to spend the next ten minutes scrolling through the comment section
searching for exactly what it was that Brocolli12 said. After years
of frustration, YouTube now does this the correct way, whereby they have a
threaded comment function where you can simply keep clicking ‘Show the
comment’ to go back and back through an argument. This has led to the
interesting discovery that in the majority of cases, I find it much
more fun to read an argument backwards and watch people transform from ranting obscene
psychopathic lunatics into relatively harmless idiots. It's like watching
a nuclear explosion in reverse.
A close cousin of the aforementioned
auto-play video is the full screen pop up ad that loads as soon as you open a
site. This is the internet’s version of the door-to-door sales rep, arriving
uninvited, smelling of cheap fragrance and forcing you to make a concerted
effort to get rid of them. I’ve come to grips with the fact that the internet
will always have ads (ad-blocking apps aside), but have not yet accepted the
fact that these ads have the right to forcefully encroach themselves upon me. I
shouldn’t complain too loudly though, because the ad creator always gives you
an option to close the ad. Naturally the ‘x’ button is the size of a pixel and
if you try and press it, but fail (you invariably will) the ad will take that
as a sign of approval and start blaring rock music at you while showing young
attractive people engaging in some sort of extreme sports activity with
whatever product is being flogged (cars, soft drink, life insurance).
Since this post could quite easily
turn into an anti-advertising rant (which I am not averse to writing, but
you're probably averse to reading) I'll make this the last ad-related flaw. But
it's a good one - those so called 'targeted' ads which turn up on your Facebook
page which try and sell you products based on your browsing history. Of course
this would work wonderfully if people actually used the internet in a
productive, meaningful way, but when is the last time you heard anybody
describe their internet habits as 'productive and meaningful?' Consequently the
ads that are generated end up being for a collection of random miscellany, from
exciting new career paths to airport parking specials to obscure medical tests.
It can actually be a fun game (your definition of fun may vary to mine) to
try and work out which particular internet search triggered the new variety of
ads that are popping up. I have to admit that sometimes the ads that come up do seem somewhat relevant to me, but I often
find this even more harrowing because it appears that my computer has developed
sentience and is attempting to speak to me.
I’m going to stop there for now,
because all this bitching and finger pointing has to be bad karma. Besides, the
longer I go on, the more likely it is that something I purport to hate will
actually appear on this very site. As we've seen, the internet is tolerant of a lot of terrible things,
but hypocrisy certainly isn’t one of them.
