10 Things I Find Repulsive on a Web Design

I couldn't say the things I'm about to share are my pet peeves when it comes to web design. It's just that for some odd reasons, I find them repulsive when I see them. Maybe it's just a case of crankiness but to each his own. This post has been triggered due to a negative biological effect I experienced from one design (spoiler alert: it's number 6).

Tabbed list content without a view all option

You know just how lovely it is to see a list of 20 Facts about the making of Game of Thrones Season 5. The problem is, you have to click a button for every fact and with each click, your time is being killed as the page loads. Instead of being happy reading behind-the-scenes of an amazing show, you get annoyed with the loading interruption.

Ugly font-face

You know, google offers lots of free beautiful fonts in its API. There are plenty to choose from. So how come a website owner would not at least use these beautiful fonts that are obviously free? I understand some websites even though updated (made responsive to smaller gadgets other than computers) stick to the oldies to cater for really old computers (government facilities in poor countries unfortunately are not updated). But there are modern websites aiming for yuppies who use high-end gadgets which are still using fonts that no longer please our equally modern eyes (I'm no yuppie btw). My eyes bleed reading their supposedly beautiful contents.

Collapsing design on a saved page

More often than not, managing bookmarks is a lot of work as compared to simply saving a page on a folder. You can also categorize things that way. There's also a fear of some pages being put down in the future when they contain sensitive stuff. So again, saving it is.

There are lots of magnificent websites in terms of content and design. It's also an amazing experience when you read great contents on a well-designed page. So just imagine my irritation as I open my saved page from a really nice-looking website containing that very long post that I'd love to read, only to be greeted by a haphazard-looking page. The content could have been really wonderful had I not been too distracted with the ugliness around it.

Click-bait post titles

Post titles are not a design per se but there simply is a design for word play. Isn't it regurgitating already when you see titles like this?

She thought there was nothing but when she opened the box, the cat was both dead and alive

Okay, Schrodinger's cat is way too adorable for this example but you get me.

Script-heavy websites that are slow to load

Using javascript or jquery makes fancy website behavior. But when my screen starts to hang (even though my RAM is at least 2GB) for that seemingly downtime error, suddenly, things are no longer fancy, they make you cranky.

That grayscale effect on hover.

It's just wonderful when you initially see a monochrome image and when you hover over it, suddenly, there's sunshine! You just discover a world of colors and find it magnificent. Sadly, the same thing cannot be said when normal colored images are given an effect where upon hovering on the images, the colors turn grayscale. It's as if life has been sucked out of the images. Worse, on my part, I feel like I'm being turned blind. That's just a terrible experience. Who won't panic in such a situation?

So there was this photo blog with images in a grid. Everytime I hover an image, it turns to gray. As I hover from one image to the next, there's this growing ache behind my left eye and the next thing I know, I was nauseated. I wanted badly to hurl my breakfast on the computer screen. And so there goes away that webpage. Better that than my digesting food going away from my mouth.

Effects vary from person to person. You can never tell that a fancy css effect would have a bad feedback to anyone. So if you're a web developer, sometimes you just need to be sensitive to those who could be sensitive to things as trivial as this. Else, you could just ignore us.

My eyes' case:

From one opthometrist to the next, I have a perfect 20/20 vision. But on 2013, I had my eyes checked by an ophtalmologist where she said my eye blood vessels are more than twice larger than normal. I forgot what she said exactly (I had other issues at that time) but to me it's something like I have a vasodilation factor of 5. The Op.D. said I had a natural mutation (that trait was inborn) and therefore, my case should not be a cause for alarm but I still have to get myself checked for a probable future case of glaucoma. This is the third time I heard I had some kind of mutation from a doctor of a different field (the first for my eyes), so hearing something like this is nothing. She told me to have my eyes checked from a high-end hospital with equally high-end technology. Their facility is simply lacking; she said I need machines with bigger tubes so they could tell more about my condition. But alas, that hospital couldn't be found from where I'm from (I had to fly a plane) and I have no money for such a huge an expense. In the end, I never got my eyes checked again. And then problems as simple as this arise....

Repetitive image (especially the round kind) as a background

And no, it has nothing to do with tryopophobia. You know there are just some web authors who would design their webpage with a static background image with obviously a small thumbnail set to repeat-x and repeat-y. The effect is that of a childish design for boxer shorts.

I have nothing against boxers with repetitive cartoon characters design in it (think of a bunch of spongebobs set on black), I just have issues of the feeling of seeing something underneath one's pants on a website that is obviously not a porn site.

So yeah, it has something to do with synesthesia. I get irritated as I walk on a sidewalk and there will be guys ahead of me whose pants are hanging way too low. While it's a relief to see boxers instead of simply briefs, it's still a sore in the eyes seeing low-hanging pants. Repetitive image reminds me of that.

But why a round image set on a background? It's simple, I see more of them on websites.

Loading image

There's just something hateful seeing that snake chasing its own tail at the center of the screen. It has nothing to do with snakes either. It's just the feeling that you might not be going anywhere with that website (you know that tension building as you wait on a busy cursor). I know that more often than not, that rolling image is necessary so netizens like you and me won't see how bad a website tends to look when it's naked... with its post images still loading while the rest of the members of the page are already up and the images are yet to resize. The transformation sure is ugly.

The thing is, I'd rather see that loading gif than watching the ugly transformation of a website. Now it makes me feel worse.

Seeing a blank page while the webpage is still loading

Some designers opt to make the page blank instead of putting a loading gif because of my reason above. Rather than make viewers feel agitated with a buffering gif, they'd rather make the viewers feel mystified on whether a website is present or not. And just when you're about to press that x button on that upper corner, the contents just fade in. Oh, so there really are contents.

There's simply no way of getting around this.

A website that looks like it dates back in the Jurassic era

I'm so accustomed with modern designs since the introduction of smartphones that when I see websites that look like it has been forgotten, I feel bad. There are still lots of websites today with helpful contents whose authors have not move along with the time. Perhaps, to me this could be the worst: a website that has been left untouched for years when it comes to design. If there's any consolation, they added a facebook like button.

What are your thoughts?