I've recently noticed that as a front end developer, i'm liking working with the web much more but as a user, I am constantly irritated by a lack of attention to detail and can see where users were not considered.
Here is a list of some annoyances I have with todays web:
- Scroll Hijacking. Never do this. Why would you even? It doesn't work and means users will miss some of your content. I use a track pad and I have lost count of how many times I have scrolled right past some content.
- Hiding UI behind hover states. (HELLO TOUCH?) You can't hover with a finger. It's not difficult to bind states.
- Difficult Online Forms. Inline validation isn't hard. Asking me for every detail about my life is over intrusive. What are you doing with these details exactly? Keep it simple.
- Overcommercialisation of the Web. Pop ups, Pop ups everywhere!
- Playing videos automatically. OMG I am at work and now everyone knows I am watching kitty videos.
- Playing music automatically. Nobody needs to hear how bad some of the music I listen to is.
- Bad Performance. Oh you like to show 2mb pretty images. Thanks. Oh wait, I can't see them as your website is taking 2 minutes to load. Bye.
- Hamburger nav. I just want to see where I might go but you've stolen this decision from me and made it that little bit harder to find where I might want to go. And now I am leaving your website forever. Stop hiding everything.
- Rubbish breakpoints. Oh you've gone responsive? That's great! Oh wait, you didn't check my particular resolution and created breakpoints based on popular devices? Not so great.
- jQuery Mobile. Absolutely nothing else to say.
- Light grey text on white background. I hate this. I seriously hate this and the designers that do this. You are destroying my eye sight.
- Centre aligning text everywhere. Yeah not reading that content.
- Massive line length. I hate this one too. Absolutely killing my eyes and gives me a massive headache from eye strain.
- Social media icons everywhere! Stop begging to be liked. Stopping begging to be followed. It's weird.
- Unskippable ads. This isn't cool at all. Do you not want people to visit your website?
- Homepage carousels. There is so much more you could do with this valuable real estate.
- Captchas. The lazy developers dream but every users nightmare. Stop using them.
I am irritated an awful lot on the web these days and I feel like my irritations are usually a lack of attention to detail or lack of funds. Neither is a very good excuse to making your websites difficult and annoying to use. Fight for the user.
You might be thinking that a lot of these issues are purely personal preferences and certainly some are but I bet if you asked your users what irritates them about your website, some of these will appear.