website's features research-a kind of survey really

[passer-by]

Hello!

Not stictly ags related, but I'd like to know what people find really boring or unprofessional on the websites they visit.
For example, some of them like "traditional" pages, others like flashy, shiny, bubbly things, others may prefer a "schoolbook", modest layout...

What do you think??

[Andail]

Depends on what purpose the site has. Pages with just information should be kept clear and simple; concept sites with art or music etc can be more experimental.
Otherwise I'm not very particular.

[Evil]

I enjoy a simple layout, even if it somewhat-... Overdone.

Organization is key, as is making it easy for me to find what I'm looking for (whatever it may be). But if you have everything beveled like this and everything in this shade of color with a 37 degree whatever, I could care less. In some cases it looks nice.

There are a lot of things I hate. Music I can't turn off is number one. I want to listen to my own music, not theirs. And most of the time someone has music on a website, it's loud and obnoxious. Another thing I hate is bright fonts. Limit colors to black on white, white on black. If it's dark red on a light tan, that's fine. So long as the color values are not exactly the same.

Intro pages are very, very unprofessional and stupid in my opinion. Other people may think differently. The only site where it's relative would be a site providing information on a new movie.

There is more, but those are fundamentals.

[Mr Jake]

Introduction sites could be considered professional. If a site was designed to work in IE only I'd rather know this before I reached the site

Features depend on the purpose, yes. If its a site about your  art or games a blog would fit, but if it was about your business making what ever then it wouldn't really.

[Evil]

That is true, but I'm talking flash movie/pointless logo. But websites can be written to tell you that if you don't have IE that it would work better if you did. I've came across those in headers before.

[Jay]

If a site was designed to work in IE only I'd rather know this before I reached the site

Any site that is designed to work in IE only is unprofessional.

That's my opinion, anyway.

[Darth Mandarb]

A truely professional site would work cross-browser AND cross-platform

I'm not a fan of flash intros anymore.  I used to like them.  No I don't.  They're sooo 1998.

As Evil said, "organization" is the key.  My biggest gripes with websites is not being able to VERY easily figure out how to find the information I'm looking for.

I'm all for trying new things with graphics, layouts, etc. but it should remain a staple that it's easy to navigate.

[InCreator]

Coooolooooorrsss!!!111!1one!1

Really.
There's like 100000+++ sites with white background.
And yellow text.
Or light blue text.
Or light green (lime) text.
And my eyes hurt so much.

So, I prefer a page with

* No silly animated gifs on it
* No ads or banners
* No flash!!!
* No Times New Roman font. Verdana or Arial at small size pleases the eye. TNR not.
* Dark background (but not black!) with white text and yellow/lightblue/lime hyperlinks. So everything would be easily readable
* Actually, all colors with low saturation work fine
* Scientists say that green color is most eye friendly. Dark green background with white text is indeed nice.
* Super-easy navigation! Needed both for website and a 3-page spaghetti.
* Simple and practical look
* Things that need to open in pop-up-window will (like maybe images/photos for easier browsing), others not
* And no-no-no! to pages that disable "back" button on my browser

Well, here.

[passer-by]

There's like 100000+++ sites with white background.

When the site is mainly text, or theÃ,  text is really long, I personally prefer white backgrounds, otherwise I print it.

Coooolooooorrsss!!!111!1one!1
And my eyes hurt so much..

Do they?

* No ads or banners

This can't always be helped in websites hosted for free.

A truely professional site would work cross-browser AND cross-platform

True, although sometimes designers work for what is considered the majority

Music I can't turn off is number one. I want to listen to my own music, not theirs.

I agree, especially when their music opens my download manager...

Depends on what purpose the site has.

Ã,  Another question here...What do you think of general purpose websites??

[auhsor]

I really hate sites that only utilise a very small area of the screen. Examples of these would be many band sites. They usually use alot of flash and fancy stuff but is really slow loading and just generally hard to navigate. Also I don't like those weird arty pages with tiny text and weird navigation.

And yeah I don't like all that other stuff that InCreator mentioned.

[Blackthorne]

http://maddox.xmission.com

This site is perfectly designed.  No extraneous or stupid cluttered stuff, and it loads in an instant.


I hate:

   Pop up banners
   MIDI that plays in the background
   Movies that automatically load
   Excessive graphics


Just some peeves.


Bt

[Mr Jake]

MAddox isn't really perfecly designed, it can be pretty hard to navigate some of his stuff.

[passer-by]

MAddox isn't really perfecly designed, it can be pretty hard to navigate some of his stuff.

I checked many popular sites in this site, and most of them didn't succeed!!

[Mr Jake]

also use http://validator.w3.org/ for the official validator for the W3C.

Also, I just used WatchFire and it seems more like an advert for their services than a useful validator.

[passer-by]

also use http://validator.w3.org/ for the official validator for the W3C.

Also, I just used WatchFire and it seems more like an advert for their services than a useful validator.

I agree. Anyway, it did show important errors. I also tried your link, same failure rates...I'm not talking about amateurish personal pages, but for some really big ones...

Either they are waaay tooÃ,  strict, or some designers should start looking for a job in another field.

[Vince Twelve]

Boo to this:

* No flash!!!

Why the hate?  Flash can be used responsibly and can greatly improve the quality of a user's experience at your site.  Flash intros and ads that fly in front of what you're trying to read are bad, but just because a program makes these bits of bad UI design possible, doesn't mean that that piece of software is bad all the time.

Stop the stereotyping of innocent software!

There are some fantastic sites and web-applications that are improved by the use of Flash or would not otherwise be possible without Flash.

There are two things that I really hate in this world: Ignoring all the benefits of a piece of powerful software while irrationally claiming that it is inherently bad, and Java.  God damn Java...