Today, my little slice of cyberspace will provide a much needed amplifier for something that has been bugging me for quite some time. In the good’ol days… websites were authored by companies and supergeeks. Once you bought a domain name, and found a place to host it somewhere, then you had to code your own HTML. Now, blogs, templates, myspace, and WYSIWYGs make the net accessible to any clown with fingers.
[A tangent] Often, the lovely and talented Mrs. eSquared and I discuss the age where one is compelled to accumulate junk, and display it in the home like trophies. At what age does one see a lil’ darlin salt & pepper set at the goodwill and gasp with excitement? Then do we move from haughty contempt to “won’t this look great next to the ‘gone fishin’ nick-knack on the fireplace mantle”? Both of us have sworn a murder-suicide pact when we get this old.
Back to my point… personal web pages have become virtual display-cases for the useless shit of the internet. Because of the anonymity of the internet, I’m not sure if age is a causal, or spurious variable in this equation. Nonetheless, if you’re wondering, here are some examples of the garbage can fodder that litter the dusty shelves of the internet.
Pop-ups, pop-downs, pop-ins, pop-overs, pop-unders. Yes, I have a pop-up blocker, but there is the very odd instance where one sneaks through. I can appreciate that you might be using a free host (such as tripod or GeoCities). And from the free hosting site's point of view, I can appreciate the need to bring in the revenue. Wait, you know what? No, I can't. Pop-ups suck and there's never any justification for them.
You resized my browser window. I hate that. I've got my browser set just where I like it and now you're forcing me to resize it? Worse yet, you maximized my browser window so I can't just click on the "Restore Down" boxes up top.
You make me have to scroll left and right. Just because I have my monitor's resolution set to 1024 x 768 doesn't mean I want my browser window maximized. In fact, I like to keep Firefox at about an 850 pixel width. Then I put Firefox so it's flush with the right side of my screen. That way I can view my e-mail folders underneath on the left side of my screen. Your site should fit in my Firefox without a left-right scrollbar appearing at the bottom of my browser. Again, this goes with the above item. I hate having to resize my browser.
You have some God-awful color scheme, font colors, and/or fonts. Your whole page is red text on a neon green background. In script. Italicized. That means you're either color blind or 13. Scratch that, a 13-year-old knows better.
Animated GIFs. You have more than one. Yes, your row of 863 waving and blinking smiley faces is very nice, as are the blinking purple stars on your page's background. And your 17 virtual pets. And your And the thousands of dancing hamsters. And the rotating "Sign My Guestbook." And the spinning envelope with "E-mail Me!" written on it. And the flashing "Under Construction!" sign...four of them. (Just so you know, EVERY PAGE ON THE INTERNET is "under construction," since websites are updated all the time. Don't worry, I know you're working very hard on building your site. I promise not to forget.)
You have an incredibly elaborate Flash interface for your site. If I see a little "Loading" percentage bar in the middle of my screen, I click close.
Your webpage has music on it. If I'm sitting at my desk quietly, not listening to music or the TV, and suddenly this music comes blaring out of my speakers I'm going to have to clean the skidmarks off my ceiling. Now, there are two kinds of music in this particular violation. The first is MIDI, the internet's elevator music. The second is MP3/WAV/Whatever...an actual streaming song. If you don't know the difference between the two, it's OK. All you need to know is that both types suck. Look, if you want me to listen to your cool music? ASK ME. If I want to, I'll play it. Don't force it on me. Besides, I'm already listening to music. And it's better than yours.
You use the friggin' BLINK attribute. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, you only used it once. That's once too many. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
ur hOLe pAgE iz wRiTTun LiK thS. LiKe OMG! dID u C teh O.c. lasT nItE? I sO hEArT tHat sHw! Like, oh my God, I hope you come down with a serious case of spontaneous human combustion.
Your site requires me to register and log in before I can view the contents. Screw that shit. I've got enough accounts and passwords to keep track of already, thank you very much. Yes, of course there are plenty of web sites where a log-in makes perfect sense - for example, Yahoo!, G-mail, and my bank.
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