Worst of the worst web page features

[Reverend Conehead]

Here are the web page features I cannot STAND! (None of these are directed at CZ.)

1. That thing where they disable the back button so you can't click on "back" to exit back to where you were if you're not interested. Disabling the Back button won't make a page more interesting. It will just piss people off and make them never want to come back.
2. Pages that auto-play videos. If a video is on the page, the user should get to decide whether it plays. I've woken up family members and made inappropriate noise at work thanks to some goober who put an auto-playing video on his page. (Are you listening, 247 sports?)
3. Annoying popup boxes that suddenly block where you were reading, bugging you to sign up for something. Do that and I automatically don't want to sign up for whatever it is.
4. Disabling the ability to copy text for pasting. I'm not going to steal someone's web page, but it's my legal right to quote a passage if I'm reviewing something. I've installed a plugin to get around this annoying feature.
5. Flashing banner ads. Nothing turns on the "no way am I buying from these *******s" instinct more than flashing ads.

 

[Reality]

As a developer, I can comment on these .. as a user, I agree with you

1. That thing where they disable the back button so you can't click on "back" to exit back to where you were if you're not interested. Disabling the Back button won't make a page more interesting. It will just piss people off and make them never want to come back.

This has less to do with choice and more to do with front-end design replacing a lot of back-end driiven sites that the web has used since it began. Front-end powered sites (most of which are powered by javascript) are retrieving data and using components to update the current page rather than loading a new page. Until recently, most sites were back-end powered pages, so when you click something, the browser loads the new page making the previous page available to the BACK button. However, with front-end driven sites, you never actually leave the page you are on. The front-end code can load parts or even an entire page and replace the current page rather than have the browser direct you to that URL. Once the areas or entire page is retrieved and processed by the front-end code, it can also update the URL of your browser as well. So, it appears like you have loaded a new page like you are used to seeing, but in reality, you never left the page you were on, it only appears that way. The benefit to doing this is that it greatly improves page load speed and also reduces bandwidth usage.

That said, javascript has the ability to create a page history chain for the site you are on, but it requires a lot more work to make that process run smoothly and it also relies heavily on various browser implementations of that support which are not always reliable.

2. Pages that auto-play videos. If a video is on the page, the user should get to decide whether it plays. I've woken up family members and made inappropriate noise at work thanks to some goober who put an auto-playing video on his page. (Are you listening, 247 sports?)

I absolutely cannot stand auto play video or audio for any site except maybe a dedicated video site like Youtube. At best, this should be an opt-in feature, not opt-out or even worse, no way to disable it.

3. Annoying popup boxes that suddenly block where you were reading, bugging you to sign up for something. Do that and I automatically don't want to sign up for whatever it is.

These are basically the new popup windows from the early days of the web. I try my best to never focus on what it shows on them and try to close them without ever reading a word. What makes these so annoying is that they usually contain frivolous crap that most users would never be interested in.

4. Disabling the ability to copy text for pasting. I'm not going to steal someone's web page, but it's my legal right to quote a passage if I'm reviewing something. I've installed a plugin to get around this annoying feature.

I agree completely. I could understand a site doing this if their content is being stolen regularly, but it is still highly annoying. There are a lot of other ways to combat copy/paste content stealing including many that cannot be bypassed.

5. Flashing banner ads. Nothing turns on the "no way am I buying from these *******s" instinct more than flashing ads.

The first thing I try to do is scroll the page or resize the browser window to get them out of the viewing area. If I can't, I usually leave the site immediately or if it is something I really need to read, I will look for a "print this article" option and click it.

 

[Reverend Conehead]

As a developer, I can comment on these .. as a user, I agree with you


This has less to do with choice and more to do with front-end design replacing a lot of back-end driiven sites that the web has used since it began. Front-end powered sites (most of which are powered by javascript) are retrieving data and using components to update the current page rather than loading a new page. Until recently, most sites were back-end powered pages, so when you click something, the browser loads the new page making the previous page available to the BACK button. However, with front-end driven sites, you never actually leave the page you are on. The front-end code can load parts or even an entire page and replace the current page rather than have the browser direct you to that URL. Once the areas or entire page is retrieved and processed by the front-end code, it can also update the URL of your browser as well. So, it appears like you have loaded a new page like you are used to seeing, but in reality, you never left the page you were on, it only appears that way. The benefit to doing this is that it greatly improves page load speed and also reduces bandwidth usage.

That said, javascript has the ability to create a page history chain for the site you are on, but it requires a lot more work to make that process run smoothly and it also relies heavily on various browser implementations of that support which are not always reliable.


I absolutely cannot stand auto play video or audio for any site except maybe a dedicated video site like Youtube. At best, this should be an opt-in feature, not opt-out or even worse, no way to disable it.


These are basically the new popup windows from the early days of the web. I try my best to never focus on what it shows on them and try to close them without ever reading a word. What makes these so annoying is that they usually contain frivolous crap that most users would never be interested in.


I agree completely. I could understand a site doing this if their content is being stolen regularly, but it is still highly annoying. There are a lot of other ways to combat copy/paste content stealing including many that cannot be bypassed.


The first thing I try to do is scroll the page or resize the browser window to get them out of the viewing area. If I can't, I usually leave the site immediately or if it is something I really need to read, I will look for a "print this article" option and click it.

Thanks for your comments. Btw, I very much appreciate that CZ is nicely designed. For the flashing banner, I can also right click and shut it off with my ad blocker if I have it turned on. However, I often have my ad blocker turned off. If a site isn't obnoxious with ads, I leave it off. It's only when sites become like harassers bombarding you with flashing ads and other crap that I turn it on.