I love to surf the Internet in those "down" times when my brain is overloaded and I can’t write a single word. I hop around from site to site, visiting links and gathering new information. The people with whom I work have no idea what I am doing most of the time. They probably think I sit at my desk all day working like a demon. Most of the time I can get away with this. But, once in a while, I will pop into a site, which, for some reason I cannot fathom, has background audio going on. I’m not talking about a musician’s site – I expect music when I go there. I am talking about background music on a site where you would not otherwise expect it.
What’s worse than being startled out my wits by a sudden outburst of music, is to be unable to shut it off. If you must use music, make sure you offer your readers the option of turning it off easily and quickly. When I hit on one of these sites, I just close it out and don’t bother returning.
7. Anything Cutesy
I could create another sub-list under this topic! I hate little, trailing cursors, and stars or snowflakes that litter up the background of a web page. Cartoons and other animated features annoy me no end. Enough said…
8. Pop-ups
The only thing that bugs me more than cutesy are pop-ups of any sort. If they are advertisements, I close them out as quickly as they appear. If they are part of the web design, I am annoyed beyond reason. Why do people include a link on their main page that produces a pop-up? I can’t "save" it as favorite or link to it? It is useless to me.
9. Links That Do Not Open Up New Browser Windows
I feel the same way about links that do not open up new browser windows as I do about pop-ups. If I click to open up a new page, I expect to be able to close it and not lose the original page. More often than not, I discover a page while searching online and may not remember the name or URL. If the page disappears when I close out the window that I opened, I am not always able to quickly return to the page in which I was interested. It is so easy to set this up.