Annoying Web design

I don’t understand why people think certain features make their Web pages better or more appealing, when all they really do is annoy the %$#^&* out of visitors.

I know I’m going to revisit this topic as soon as I come across another of those things that drive me crazy, but here are three.

1. Highlighting every search term you used to find the page. For example, if I Google “how do I change my oil,” there are some sites that will highlight every instance of each of those words, often in different colors. That makes it incredibly annoying to read. I get the idea, but there’s gotta be an off switch. (And I have no idea what Matt Roggott and Brian Suda were drinking when they wrote “Enhance Usability by Highlighting Search Terms” for A List Apart.)

2. Too many darned links. It makes sense to link to major terms, and certainly to Web pages that you reference, but some pages — I notice this frequently with news sites — link dozens of words even if they have nothing to with the story. Usually these are company names that link to the company home pages (not very useful) or stock price (ditto), but sometimes it’s worse. Some will links any term that corresponds to a section on the site. So every occurrence of the word “software” will link to the software category.

Wikipedia can get nuts like this too, with links to every conceivable page. “John Doe was the manager of a grocery store on a side street in downtown Atlanta during the opening weeks of World War II.” It’s one thing to link to significant entries, but to words that just have a definition (a la “week”)? Come on.

3. Gray body text. Why? Why? Are you trying to save ink by not using black? Does gray make the page more readable? No, in fact the opposite. Lower contrast just makes it harder to see. Is it a style thing? If so, it’s a stupid one.

4. Rollover ads. You know these things — highlighted text that pops up a small ad if you dare to accidentally roll your mouse over one. Companies pay to be linked to certain terms; maybe you would roll over the word “audio” and — bam! — up comes an ad for iTunes or whatever. Incredibly, incredibly annoying. Luckily there are Firefox extensions to shut that off, but still. Come on, guys.

More to come, I’m certain.