HTML Halloween Horrors

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Monday, October 30th, 2006 at 5:30pm

It’s the end of October, and in keeping with the spirit of the season, I thought I’d share with you some really scary stuff: 

It’s a cute little animated gif you say!  Sure, it’s cute.  But it’s representative of so much more.

Let me start off by saying that our clients are awesome.  You folks understand the importance of a good website, proper design, best practice, and web standards.  That’s probably why you’re a Hannon Hill client!  But it’s a big scary virtual world out there, and we all know it.  Here are just some of the nightmares that are to be found on the www:

1. Tables.  I think we can all agree at this point that CSS is the way to go.  If you haven’t been to www.csszengarden.com, check it out.  I know that there’s a lot of legacy code out there in tables that’s probably not half bad and it gets the job done, but for all you people out there who are still designing sites from scratch using tables, come on!
2. Large repeating background images.  You all know what I’m talking about.  They take ages to load, look tacky, and you pretty much have to highlight any text in order to read it.
3. Embedded audio.  I can’t say this really bothers me that much, because I keep my speakers on mute.  But have you ever navigated to a website and thought, this site would be so much better if only there were an annoying jingle repeating in the background?  Yeah, me neither.
4. Excessive Javascript.  I got this one from one of our integrators (I was polling people in the hallways).  “But don’t you sometimes need lots of Javascript to make cool stuff happen?” I ask.  “Sure, sometimes,” he tells me, “but you gotta plan it out first.  It has to be well put together code and functional across all browsers.”  Ok, I see his point.  Javascript for Javascript’s sake sends shivers up the spines of good developers everywhere.
5. Too much flash.  Not only is it not accessible, it can give you a headache!  Granted, there are some pretty nice uses for flash, and in moderation, it can really make a site come alive.  But all too often, flash skills fall into the wrong hands, and good websites are turned to the dark side.
6. Animated Gifs.  My favorites are the one of the mailbox opening and shutting for “email me” and the construction dude shoveling for “site under construction.”  These will go down in history as the defining images for the information era.
7. Pictures of people in business suits smiling at computers.  These don’t even have to be animated to be scary.  And yes, we’ve had our share at Hannon Hill too.
8. Broken links.  All the more reason for a CMS, yes? 
9. Outdated sites.  Not just the ones with old copyright dates, but also the ones that say “This site is in progress, please check back on x date” and the date was some time last year.  Often accompanied by a guy shoveling.
10. Poorly thought through URLs.  These are the ones that are meant to say one thing, but because there’s no spaces, it just doesn’t work.  At Hannon Hill we have a favorite lunchtime restaurant, The Taco Stand.  Best burritos in Atlanta.  Unfortunately, their website is www.thetacostand.com, which results in us calling it Theta Co more often than not.

Have a safe and happy Halloween everyone!

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