Which Web anachronism should die first?

8 Comments

  • John Barelli - 14 years ago

    I really dislike the automatic refresh. It takes up bandwidth and computing power that I have better uses for, and has a nasty tendency to interrupt while I'm in the middle of something, like reading the article.

    As much as I like HuffPo, I've started avoiding the site, just because it can't ever seem to quit loading and just let me read.

  • peter - 15 years ago

    Ads at the top of the list - expected :)

  • Anachron - 15 years ago

    Saving is often a good idea because sometimes we want some helpful docs to be at hand when the Internet is inaccessible.
    Having a lot of accounts is getting more security at the expense of usability. That's natural.
    One size fits all... well, if the designer finds a size that's comfortable for (almost) everyone, why not use it? (But first (s)he has to find one)
    Blocker ads can be blocked :) using one of those tiny tools floating around. If one don't feel like preventing one's favorite sites from earning money on advertising then there's always a possibility to block some ads selectively.
    I guess Refresh is the most annoying one. Half a megabyte of static content loaded at once is terrible even with a fast internet connection. But using dynamic page updates requires client-side code to work similarly on different browsers. The alternative is a very lightweight page or the same ad blocking tool used for non-advertising content - just to save bandwidth :)

  • Ed Ucated - 15 years ago

    Blocker ads on the tiny window that is MSN Messenger / Windows Live Messenger.
    REALLY aggressive and annoying. Microsoft make enough bloody money to subsidise it without ads, so it's doubly-annoying again!

  • pcavv - 15 years ago

    About the save it depends on the content, for example i would hate the word or excel to save after action.... you always have the autosave option just in case...

  • Gary - 15 years ago

    cnet should look at number 5

  • chris - 15 years ago

    Another thing, some sites just don't know how to implement it. Which you wouldn't belive but sometimes its just not that easy...
    It's still a stupid excuse but that is one reason. PLUS so many big companies already have massive login system's in place. why add a "univeral" component?

  • Dominic Pettifer - 15 years ago

    Not sure I agree with ditching the Save button idea. There are many actions on the web that are 'one-way' and require the use of some sort of save or commit button to emphasise to the user, 'hey you sure you wanna commit to this, this action is one way', such as financial transactions, eccomerce purchases etc.

    Also I'd guess that a universal login system hasn't taken off because different sites have different Authentication requirements, take online banking for example which require pins codes, passwords, and even hardware devices sent in the post.

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