Web pet peeves

[I first posted this on 21 October to Chapel, where I’ve blogged sporadically for quite some time. It belongs here, too. I’ll still be posting the really weeeird stuff over there, because that’s what it’s for.]

I ran into a major Web pet peeve and posted it to Twitter, in the process remembering that I have several others (a few of which I spent all afternoon working around)…

• Web sources cited by mass media outlet content that don't link directly to them
• e-commerce sites that break at ANY point when you’re using a browser other than Internet Explorer
• e-commerce sites that don't create a semi-permalink to a customizable cart item
• any application that breaks the instant you press the Back button, without warning you in advance of the consequences of doing so
• failure to provide range selection support (beyond “check all”) for series of checkbox selection inputs (e.g. mail inbox)
• applications that crash on purportedly tested platforms
• process-critical services and applications that do not have a System Status resource
• sites and applications that treat content sections like static search results
• project sponsors who fancy themselves graphic designers despite a total lack of training and experience
• ads with sound on otherwise silent sites
• categorically, ads that talk
• news and social linking sites that toss resources down the memory hole without consequently returning a 410 (Gone) status code along with the title of the clobbered resource (or at least some indication that something formerly lived there)
• applications that enforce user behavior by limiting choice in a bizarre way (here’s looking at you, Facebook Status)
• sites that are only useful if you pay, yet imply otherwise in their create-an-account pitch
• anyone anywhere in any context asking how to “hide” source markup and things of the like
• anyone anywhere in any context believing that because their fucking nephew can “make a web page” in twenty minutes, they’re entitled to a full custom e-commerce site for a few hundred bucks…
• …and contrapositively, anyone who bilks the clueless out of thousands at a time for crap they build in twenty minutes with Flash or Dreamweaver
• anyone who thinks that just because they’re entitled by the right to free speech to an opinion, they really just ought to share it, despite the stench of banality and/or thoughtlessness it emits
• anyone who mistakes ignorance for willful malice
• anyone who mistakes obstinacy for courage
• anyone who thinks it’s okay to be narrow-minded about the narrow-minded

Aaahhh. Now I’m done.

If you bear any witness to irony, by all means bask in it.