(Note: Some of these are really dated, as this file was started way back in 1996 or so.) When web surfing around, you sometimes find pages that make you wonder just what the author was smoking. This is a list of just a few of those things that REALLY makes you wonder. This list is by no means complete and will grow as time passes on, as technology breeds new ways through which stupidity can rear its ugly head. List of Web Pet Peeves: ============================ 1) Pages with so many frames, they look like a tile floor in poor taste. 2) Pages with a huge, gargantuan imagemap as the only source of links to the rest of the site. 3) Pages that aren't usable in Lynx or with images turned off. 4) Javascript. 5) Javascript. 6) URL's that look like they were created with a random number generator. Like http://www.somsite.com/search.cgi?mode=7258729%section=2892_area13uu290uf92 7) Text that is impossible to read on a background that reminds you of the Mystery Machine in old Scooby Doo cartoons. 8) Click. Nothing happens. Click again. What the fu*BLEEP!* is wrong with this thing. Oh, my javascript is off. Click. Page loads. Halfway through, netscape crashes. 9) Javascript. 10) Those pop up ad windows. (Geocities, Tripod, etc.) 11) Ads that self reload, wasting your bandwidth and lagging your connection. 12) Ads. Well, okay, a lot of free content wouldn't be there without them, but they ARE annoying. 13) Any page that doesn't use height and width tags on images, and therefore won't appear until every single image on the page is loaded. 14) Javascript. 15) A page with one link that says "enter" or something silly like that, that leads to the rest of the site. What is the POINT of this? 16) Huge images that have been shrunk artificially using height and width tags. We still gotta download the whole thing. 17) Stupid java applets that accomplish nothing, take forever to load, and crash the browser. 18) "Netscape Now" and "Microsoft Internet Explorer" icons. They're not paying you to promote their bloated software, and we gotta use it anyway, so shaddup about it!!! 19) A FAQ or some other document divided into half a million small pages with "next" and "previous" links. This is dumb. Just put the whole thing on one page and use reference tags. This way, it can be saved more easily. 20) Pages so complex they crash your browser even when you disable javascript and java. 21) Javascript. 22) Corporate site that lacks phone contact information. These also happen to be the companies that don't answer email. Don't buy from them. 23) Any (free) site that asks you for detailed information before letting you in. Even having to pick a name and password is pushing it. 24) The site's got a cute cybersavvy CGI Site Search mechanism but no usable table of contents, and they somehow expect you to look through it anyway? 25) Backgrounds that are bigger than the entire page combined. 26) Ugly ass backgrounds. I sometimes wonder where taste has gone. 27) A page that you can go to a movie, get some dinner, and take a nap before it finishes loading... the first half of it. 28) Search engines that return 40 identical entries in a row. Come on, ever heard of uniq? 29) Javascript. 30) Any page that only works in MSIE. 31) Any page that only works in Netscape. 32) Any site that only lets you in if you're a member of a certain ISP. "StarTrek Continuum" did this for a while but finally woke up. 33) Site with obviously stolen graphics. If you're enough of an a[BLEEP!]hole to steal graphics, at least steal obscure graphics. 34) MP3 sites with thousands of songs which are really all broken links. 35) "warez" sites with no warez. 36) Movie and TV studios that send cease-and-desist letters to fans who are merely promoting their product. What ingrates. 37) Connect: Host www.somesite.com contacted. Waiting for reply... [years pass] Connect: Host www.somesite.com contacted. Waiting for reply... [Your computer becomes obsolete...] [ReWt@milva root]# ping www.somesite.com PING www.somesite.com (207.155.126.163): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 207.155.126.163: icmp_seq=0 ttl=118 time=294.7 ms 64 bytes from 207.155.126.163: icmp_seq=1 ttl=118 time=270.4 ms 64 bytes from 207.155.126.163: icmp_seq=2 ttl=118 time=280.2 ms [reload] Connect: Host www.somesite.com contacted. Waiting for reply... "ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGH!!!!" 38) Broken links within a site. 39) Sites that haven't been updated in 3 years. 40) Text so well camouflaged, you need to hilight it to read it. 41) Pages with no content. 42) Search engines that return 90% broken links due to lack of pruning. 43) Pages with the followed and non-followed link colors set exactly the same. I like to know where I've been dadgummit! 44) Idiots that use every single feature Netscape, Java, Shockwave, and animated gifs have to offer. Such pages usually take three years to load, and their content can be presented better in 3K of plain text. 45) XXX site banners on warez and MP3 sites. What a joke. I once saw a site like that which made me visit the XXX page and enter a pass- word from that page. 46) Pages that autoforward you to another page right away. This is annoying cuz when you click back, it re-forwards you again! 47) Computer generated URL's that are 50 miles long. Ever had to quote one of these to someone over a ten-finger connection? Real pain in the ass. Design better scripts that don't create such huge URL's!! 48) A 500K .GIF representing 5K of text. It usually looks nasty in addition to being huge. 49) "No right-click" scripts. The webmaster puts in javascript to pop up an annoying dialog when you try to right-click. A juvenile, ineffective way to try to prevent image and source "theft". IT'S MY BROWSER, AND I CAN RIGHT-CLICK WHEREVER I WANT, SAVE ANY IMAGE I WANT, AND EXAMINE ANY SOURCE I WANT, THANK YOU. (Of course, this is made possible by bad browser design; Mozilla is unaffected by this!) 50) Javascript based links where an ... would work fine. Mostly because nobody seems to know how to code Javascript properly. 51) Pages that have so much DHTML and rollovers on them that the browser slows to a crawl whenever you are on that page. The sad thing is this excess doesn't usually add to the page at all quality-wise. 52) Using Javascript to prevent selection of text. Sometimes I like to E-mail an excerpt from a page to someone, and it is really annoying to have to click Javascript off to be able to do this. 53) "Last Updated" dates that are three years ago, when the page was obviously updated just recently. If you bother to put a "Last Updated" on your page, update it! 54) Websites that sniff your browser and refuse to show you the page unless you're running a certain browser, EVEN IF THE BROWSER YOU ARE RUNNING CAN DISPLAY THE PAGE FINE. 55) Any site that prompts you to install a useless plugin like Gator or Comet Cursor. 56) Webmasters overprotective about content that no one would want to steal. I mean, why would anyone steal pictures of your cat, offspring, or eBay auction pictures? 57) WYSIWYG editors that insert a gajillion pieces of useless and/or confusing code into the HTML which seems to serve no purpose. The result, of course, is that a simple web page with the word "Hello." on it ends up being a 30K HTML document. (submitted by Tybee@FurryMUCK) Email suggestions to zorin at zorin . org