I love web design. That’s why I design my own websites. Well, also because I fervently believe in self-torture. It builds character. Everyone (as in most writers I talk to) has their own list of website design likes and dislikes. We need to think about such things so when we build our sites (or hire others to design them for us), we only drive our browsers nuts, not ourselves. Here are my website bugaboos:
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It should be spelled website. I don’t care that some dictionary says it’s Web site. I will never purposely spell Web site on my website (except I just did).
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I don’t understand tag clouds. What’s the purpose? To me, they look like someone threw up their vegetable soup. And the words that are bigger than the others? They look like they’re on an ego trip. I know tag clouds are (practically) the latest thing, but no way, no how, not ever (or at least until I change my mind) am I including a tag cloud on my blog.
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I can not abide moving navigation menus. You know, they hang on the side of a web page, and when you scroll down, the menu scrolls down, too? It’s a very clever idea. I liked it the first time I saw it. Then, as soon as I began scrolling, the moving menu creeped me out. The moving menu is far too Hitchcocky/Big Brother for me. It makes me feel like the computer screen’s alive, and we all know I have far too active an imagination to sleep comfortably after that. Honestly, moving menus can make me leave a website nearly as fast as…
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Music on websites. It drives me bonky. Whenever I vist a friend’s MySpace page, the first thing I do is shut off the music. I hereby vow that I will never ever ever install music on my MySpace page. I know the idea is that the song individualizes the page, but I find the songs make the pages take too long to load. And, well, I’m not one of those people who writes to music, so I don’t want to surf the ‘net to music, either. (Note, I rarely visit MySpace anymore, but when I did, the music most assuredly drove me nuts.) And music on real websites drives me nuts, too. I really, honestly don’t understand how browsers can focus on the words on the screen with music crowding up their brains.
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Animations… I can handle one or maybe two animations per page. Any more than that, and I start to get dizzy, no matter how cute or clever the animations are. I must say that I do like rollovers and remote rollovers and even animations that are somehow built into the web page banner and…this is very important…aren’t intrusive. However, give me more than one thing bouncing around, or, God forbid, following my cursor all over the page, and I don’t stick around very long. Especially when hearts or clover leafs or jack o’ lanterns start following my cursor around! I can’t get away from them! Drives me nuts!
I sometimes joke that I have adult ADD. I DO know I have HAWD (Hyper Active Website Disorder). Because there’s a commonality in my list of website don’ts. Too much visual or aural activity and I go nuts.
What are your website bugaboos? Oh, and “Writers Who Complain About Websites,” “Cindy’s Website,” and “Cindy” are not acceptable answers.