There is so much bloat with needless JavaScript out there on the web these days it’s insane.

We’ve all seen them on something like ninety percent of the websites out there. You know the ones that pop up begging for you to subscribe to their email list or the chat pop ups and lets not for get the modal cookie pop ups that really don’t give you a choice. Thankfully ublock eats a lot of these popups to make websites more usable. Today I ran into an instance that was particularly annoying.

I was reading an article last night in 2600 about phone systems and it brought up how much has changed. Growing up phones were expensive and certainly cell phones were out of the question. We didn’t even have a working landline. If we had one to call long distance would have been very expensive unlike now. For 40 dollars a month now I get a cell phone with unlimited calling anywhere, at least in the United States and maybe some other places but I don’t call them so I wouldn’t know.

I was searching for information on the Idaho earthquake last night and the first three links I clicked were pay walled. Not that there is anything wrong with paywalls themselves, it’s the publishers choice to have them and make money somehow. Hell, if prices were more reasonable and there was a safe, reasonable payment method I’d pay for a few sites. My only issue with them is when they show up as a top search result on a search engine with the full snippet of what you’re searching for but then when you click the link it’s pay walled.

Surely I’ve bitched about the annoying fucking sign up for our mailing list popups on every site these days before but I’ve been noticing them using animation and wobbling and useless shit like that lately. The simple fact is that you’re not getting my email address unless I do business with you and you need a way to communicate delivery or order status or something. The only thing these fancy begging popups do is annoy me enough that I will most likely go elsewhere for what I am looking for.

Please stop using auto playing videos in news articles. If the video adds something to the content of the article that’s great, have the video there but allow me to click play when I’m ready. It’s particularly annoying when I’m on my phone where I only have a finite amount of data and speed. Nothing like full volume startling you when you’re trying to read the news first thing in the morning.

What happened to Slashdot? At one time it was the first site I visited in the morning. Now I just visit it once in a while since it has become so slow and bloated. They used to have interesting news and even more interesting comments. Now all they show is old stories with the same old memes.

It seems to be far too common for websites to have a pop up begging for my email address these days. If I come to a website that has a pop up begging for my email address that covers the actual content I am trying to read I leave the site immediately and do my best to never return again.

Die CAPTCHA inventor DIE! I absolutely hate CAPTCHAs. It’s nice that sites try to block spammers and all but passing the responsibility on to the user in such a difficult manor isn’t the best approach. For example today I needed to enter one just to enter my google account. No problem except for the fact that the damn thing was even less legible than my hand writing. They also have an audio option.

Google says they are cracking down on spam. That would be nice as their results have not been very good recently. Almost every search has crappy results from the same sites such as ehow and yahoo answers. There’s also the useless sites that want you to jump through hoops to get the answers to your questions and of course the answers are stolen. Google says they’re doing something about it but we’ll see.

A few minutes ago I looked up a local pizza shop’s website to see if they deliver. What a train wreck that site is! First things first it’s flash only. Their is a little animation.. Basically the shops name moves up on the screen then a graphic shows up. I only turned flash on to see how poorly done the site was. The text is small and it’s only got a menu for the types of food.

Here’s a message to those websites who think they are disabling right clicking to prevent someone from stealing your photos. You are not preventing anything but you are hurting usability for those of us who may want to open a link in a new tab or a new window. I know I could just middle click but I choose to right click and use the menu. This may be hard for you to understand but your images and page were transferred from your server to my computer.

This morning while reading Reddit I saw someone who is legally blind ask for some advice on a computer issue. I saw some suggestions with good intention that really wouldn’t help and some things that were ignorant. I wanted to address some of them here since I see this in real life all the time being legally blind myself. The first suggestion that stands out the suggestion of wearing glasses. That’s a great idea except for the fact that if someone knows they’re legally blind chances are they would already have glasses if they would help.