JLH Design

Warning: copy() [function.copy]: Filename cannot be empty in /home/jlhdes/public_html/wp-content/plugins/mytube/mytube.php on line 220

I use the Internet mainly the old fashioned way, I surf it. Oh sure I’ll use a search engine when I need to find something, but usually I just surf. It’s like a conversation with your Grandma then, going from one subject to the next no matter how remote they may be related. Besides lately if you search for something all you are going to find is wiki pages anyway.

So as an Internet consumer I’ve gotten pretty good at making snap-judgements, usually within three seconds I know if I’m going to continue on with the site I landed on or if I’m going to hit the back button. With that in mind I’ve come up with this list of 20 23 things that I consider signals of crap and time to move on.

1. Delusions of Grandeur – Any site that claims to be “your best”, “the best source for…”, “the most complete…” is usually not. As a matter of fact the sites that are indeed the best and most complete don’t find the need to trumpet it.

2. What year is it? – If I see an outdated copyright date, or an update date over six months old I move on. If you don’t have the time to update your site, I’ll go to the library to read old information.

3. 300 baud - I browse with a 5 meg broadband connection. If your site is so laden with pictures or hooked up to the web with a 300 baud voice modem, I’ll back-button you before the 3 seconds is up.

4. 1994 – Using elements that were popular about a dozen years ago is a true signal of crap. These included guest-books, hit counters, or banner ads.

5. My Eyes! - You giant font people know who you are, you’ve got sites that look like they were built with AOL’s site builder in 1994. Giant headers and giant fonts that allow about 3 words per sentence.

6. My Eyes! (part 2) - Awful color schemes drive me nuts. Design is one thing but I’d rather see a white background with black font than try to read your green text on a black background or nasty pink background.

7. What the hell? –kind of related to #6 but the unreadable sites blow my mind. These are the ones usually with black backgrounds and really small fonts. Do these webmasters actually ever visit their own site?

8. My Ears! - anything that automatically plays a song is done in seconds, this includes ESPN playing their stupic commercials on load-up. If you’ve got a midi song than I know for sure the site hasn’t been attended to in a few decades.

9. Vegas baby! –I’m not sure if its a symptom of FrontPage or the like but what in the world would make someone think scrolling banners, flashing text, or blinking ads would make me want to view the site. I shouldn’t have to feel like I’m having a seizure while viewing your site.

10. Flash This. – Ok, I understand you artsy design types like to have your pretty pictures and all which is great, but for the love of Pete, make it an option. I will not load up and view your flash introduction EVER EVER EVER, so you’d better give me an html link right off the bat or I’m not going any further.

11. Size does Matter - Apparently some web designers think we are all browsing on our 32″ flat screen monitors, but in reality most are not. If I have to use a scroll bar at the bottom to get your page into view, I’m oughta there!

12. Look who’s talking now? - more in the content, but one of my pet peeves is changing the person in a paragraph.

13. F7 - Spell check your document please, its a computer for heavens sake it’s not like you’ve got to use whiteout.

14. Don’t tell me what to use – The suggestion that this site is “best viewed with…” drives me up a wall. Make the site viewable with the big browsers and those odd balls that write their own browser can learn to deal with it. There isn’t some fool out there using his Netscape Navigator that hasn’t heard of Internet explorer and is just looking for the opportunity you presented to download it.

15. Web 0.1 beta –an reference to now defunct products like Alta Vista, HotBot, Netscape, or Lycos is a pure sign of junk.

16. D for Dumb? I think way back when we were all new to the Internet and AOL was the big player it was a neat idea to tell people how to bookmark things with CTRL-D, but we’ve moved past that level of remedial education and if you haven’t, well the web has passed you by.

17. Water, Water Everywhere –Part of web design is not only having something to say and finding a pretty way to say but it’s also your responsibility to organize the information for the reader. A homepage with 500 links to other pages just screams that this person has no clue how to organize information and a clear signal that the information contained within is just as disorganized. Give me navigation, not 500 decisions to make.

18. War and Peace – The home page is supposed to be just that, HOME, not the entire freaking site. If your home page is 1200 inches long, well you need to learn how to break things down into categories, subjects, and pages.

19. MFA - Ever since the introduction of pay per click the web has turned to crap. MFA refers to sites that are made for adsense. The key to being a successful adsense publisher is to have information that just barely scratches the surface on the subject and leaving your viewer wanting more, thus they are not motivated to provide the answers as you won’t clicky the ads. I’m happy to announce I don’t even pay for my hosting with my adsense income on this blog.

20. Above the fold - You don’t see the wall street journal put the lead story on page 3 do you? No the import stuff, the meat should be right on top, viewable without having to scroll or click. If all you’ve got above the fold is your header or navigation links, I’m gone. Sell me on the site first, then I’ll figure out how to go deeper in.

21. All Boxed In – If you are still using frames on your site, well I’ve got news for you, you are behind the times. If you’ve got the greatest site in the world and I find the cure for cancer on one of your frames, how the heck am I going to tell anyone about it? I can’t link to it as they’ll just get your home page.

22. No more snippets - Google does a fine job of creating snippets for me when i search for things. If your only contribution to the Internet is a two sentence snippet about some other site and a link, well then I should have been there in the first place not wasting my time looking at your page.

23. Product reviews, puuleezze. - There may have been some well meaning affiliates a few years ago, but they’ve all been run out of town by the RSS feed generated affiliate sites. If I see an amazon link box, with a “review” around it I’ll move on to the writer of the review and perhaps the actual merchant who will have more information.