JDoors Posted April 5, 2007 Report Share Posted April 5, 2007 (edited) So I buy a new flavor (new to me, anyway) of Doritos: Smokin' Cheddar BBQ. Yum! On the back of the package they say they're having a "fight" between this new flavor and another, and only one will "survive." Go to doritos.com and vote by typing in a code given on the package. Well, that smokey BBQ flavor is fantastic, unique, I'd love it if it survived, so off I go next time I'm online. Flash. Not just flash, but the flashiest flash they can flash. Eventually you can skip the intro. Great (time's a-tickin' away). Now your're presented with a flash "community; buildings, cars, crowds, etc. (tick, tick, tick) Where do I go? Here? Another flash animation loads, it's not what I want, I think. At least I don't see anything like a place to type a code into. Here? Nope, more time wasted. Here? Nope .... Screw this, adios dorito! Can't tell you the number of times I abandoned a site because they used programmers that were more interested in showing off their programming talent than serving customers. Yeah, it's fancy. Yeah, it's clever. But does it do what I want as a consumer? No. Dummies. Edited April 5, 2007 by JDoors Quote Link to post Share on other sites
hitest Posted April 5, 2007 Report Share Posted April 5, 2007 So I buy a new flavor (new to me, anyway) of Doritos: Smokin' Cheddar BBQ. Yum! On the back of the package they say they're having a "fight" between this new flavor and another, and only one will "survive." Go to doritos.com and vote by typing in a code given on the package. Well, that smokey BBQ flavor is fantastic, unique, I'd love it if it survived, so off I go next time I'm online. Flash. Not just flash, but the flashiest flash they can flash. Eventually you can skip the intro. Great (time's a-tickin' away). Now your're presented with a flash "community; buildings, cars, crowds, etc. (tick, tick, tick) Where do I go? Here? Another flash animation loads, it's not what I want, I think. At least I don't see anything like a place to type a code into. Here? Nope, more time wasted. Here? Nope .... Screw this, adios dorito! Can't tell you the number of times I abandoned a site because they used programmers that were more interested in showing off their programming talent than serving customers. Yeah, it's fancy. Yeah, it's clever. But does it do what I want as a consumer? No. Dummies.Agreed. Eye candy at the expense of functionality is stupid. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
garmanma Posted April 5, 2007 Report Share Posted April 5, 2007 (edited) The first thing I usually do is click on the "skip intro" button. Website designers should spend more time improving the layout of the site. The way you have to navigate some sites to find what you need is ridiculousMark Edited April 5, 2007 by garmanma Quote Link to post Share on other sites
thesidekickcat Posted April 6, 2007 Report Share Posted April 6, 2007 (edited) I have a similar tale of woe, but mine is even worse...it's my dialup's (CFAITH) home page!!!They just don't seem to get it that dialup is inherently slow!!! So a couple of years back they updated their home page, from an easy to load nice site that had Christian devotionals etc to a bunch of Christian ads for various things they wanted people to start buying/doing....renting cds, doing ecards, buying books, etc. All of course with pics to slow things down, and did I mention they made it harder to find the various devotionals which now you have to go to other slow to load pages instead of on main page? So ok I just quit using that page entirely, changed my home page to wunderground weather (thanks Barb!!!)....at least I find useful stuff there from weather and alerts to earthquake/volcano activity in area, so it's at least worth a slow page load. And I can still access my CFaith email accounts (one of which has a sporatic working history and is still iffy!!!) and other account stuff by using the dialup connection window from CFaith icon on desktop. Trouble is to log out of any of the email etc accounts, it takes you to home page for CFaith...but I can X out of it and open something else from desktop icons. Until recently when they decided to try to hold us hostage to a flash program of some kind that starts loading the second it goes from logout of email to that page with no option to not have it download...GRRRR!!!...and now it is slow to respond to Xing out of the window though still can do so before it completes the download. Sigh!!! What part of dialup slow don't they understand? And what part of serving their customers who pay for it don't they understand? And what part of I pay for a dialup service and that is their business to supply what I pay for, not necessarily the nonprofit part the ministry side that they say (after they got people to sign up) is their main focus!!!??? It seems to me that Christian business and ministries should provide the best service not do main focus off what it is that people signed up for. Yes I have talked to them to no avail, they just say the ministry is their reason for being in existence...and that most people who have signed up have broadband and only signed (at less cost than we pay by alot) for the devotional ministry benefit of the site which I'm sorry to say I don't believe. So at the end of the year we get a tax deduction statement of the part that they count as ministry versus dialup service from them (only available via email on the iffy account!!!) So we were going to quit at the end of last year and move to Fry's dialup service for alot less money, but then hubby signed up for unemployment in Jan and all his job applications he sends out use the CFaith email addys, as does the State of Or. Sigh!!! So....we will wait it out until that is over with one way or another. Then so long CFaith who will be told AGAIN why we are leaving...and I doubt they care if we do or not considering their responses to my complaints before. Tech support there used to be good with nice mostly helpful guys, but seems like alot of the problems over the years would be their faulty software and/or their changes to it didn't work right at first, but last fall they were again changing their email which with the new outfit subbed to do it got even worse so had some more email trouble and called it in, they said they'd check it out and get back to me...I said by phone as neither the webmail accounts nor the POP whatever it is main account email were working....so they called past the hours I gave them of when I'd be home and left a message that they came to a consensus of what the problem was though they didn't tell me what it was by phone and get this... said they'd email me...on nonworking email. I called and left a message twice to call me back since they didn't bother to tell on menu they'd changed their hours and also no longer worked Sat mornings. So as you may have guessed...I'm still waiting for a phone call. Took several days for the webmail accounts to work, and the POP one didn't work for months which had their message on it they said but it was lost along with various others,(sigh!!!) so finally I went ahead and set up Outlook Express since Outlook and them didn't get along so now it works ok some of the time. Sigh!!!I guess you can tell I am not a happy camper with them and their slow to load website/dialup and email service/and especially with that unasked for download of some flash player trying to automatically load....so why can't their site live with one I have already, or better yet do without stuff needing it at all???!!! Since they started doing that auto flash download, I thought it would be nice to have some place to nominate them for the worst site award!!! Oh just in case anyone is wondering, I no longer recommend CFaith dialup service!!! PatGod bless everyone Edited April 6, 2007 by thesidekickcat Quote Link to post Share on other sites
isteve Posted April 6, 2007 Report Share Posted April 6, 2007 Flash is the web 2.0 version of the animated .gif. The only thing worst is a link that opens a pdf. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
bar5 Posted April 6, 2007 Report Share Posted April 6, 2007 The only thing worst is a link that opens a pdf.I totally agree. On dialup (have no choice) if I happen to click on a site in pdf format, I may as well go and make some coffee. I get stuck in pdf download and can't get it to stop until it finishes. Grrrr!!! Barb Quote Link to post Share on other sites
bozodog Posted April 6, 2007 Report Share Posted April 6, 2007 Have to add to the list, sites that aren't multi-browser functional. Webmasters need to take care to make sure their sites work in all the popular browsers. I Hate IE! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
JDoors Posted April 6, 2007 Author Report Share Posted April 6, 2007 (edited) ... it's my dialup's (CFAITH) home page!!! ... At least with Earthlink (which I've had story after story about what's wrong with) they include a popup blocker. When I was on dialup I chose the option to block ALL FLASH in addition to actual popups. I'd get a blank square, or for those pages that were entirely flash a completely blocked page. Ha. Screw ya. There are free popup blockers too and you might try one or more of them to see if any also block FLASH. Then everything's faster! Except for those PDFs. Not only do you have to wait for the PDF itself to load, but EVERY time you open your first one of the session it checks for updates, making the process take even longer. And if you already HAVE the latest version you don't get off Scott free yet! They try to push some toolbar (or something) off on you. No, I don't want yahoo anything (or whatever it is). I said it before, I said it again, and I'll say it yet again ... Stop it already! I like sites than encode PDF links to show the PDF icon by the link. Thanks for caring about your users! (Oohhh, what about those PDF links that are "hidden," where even if you hover over the link and look at the status bar it says something obscure, blah, blah, blah -- No mention it's a link to a PDF.) Edited April 6, 2007 by JDoors Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Pete_C Posted April 7, 2007 Report Share Posted April 7, 2007 Remember, firefox has some useful features; like you can get the flash blocker or no script plugins, and adblock plus just adblock the flash animations ? Or with IE ; just ad their home page to your restricted zone sites list? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
JDoors Posted April 7, 2007 Author Report Share Posted April 7, 2007 Well I gave up blocking FLASH because it seems to be ubiquitous. Either sites have welcome screens with it, or they have navigation screens with it, or they direct you to other sites with either one, or the entire site is FLASH (and sometimes I do care about visiting the site), plus so many videos use flash now. Unblocking individual sites or pages is a pain (it's doable, but you gotta clickety, clickety, click each time). None of which will matter one day when everybody has fiber optic (of course someone will invent a new technology to use up all THAT bandwidth too!). Quote Link to post Share on other sites
garmanma Posted April 7, 2007 Report Share Posted April 7, 2007 None of which will matter one day when everybody has fiber optic (of course someone will invent a new technology to use up all THAT bandwidth too!).Yeah, terabyte(?) filesharingMark Quote Link to post Share on other sites
hitest Posted April 7, 2007 Report Share Posted April 7, 2007 The sad reality is that many web designers design their sites for broadband users. Many sites ignore the bandwidth limitations that dial-up users are faced with. I think that dial-up users should be given a choice to launch animated gifs, video clips, etc.I personally think that high speed Internet is worth the extra expense. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
JDoors Posted April 8, 2007 Author Report Share Posted April 8, 2007 Yeah, terabyte(?) filesharing ... Hey, maybe you can download Gramma and Grandpa for their next visit!The sad reality is that many web designers design their sites for broadband users. ... On top of ignoring those of us who have not, can not, or will not upgrade beyond Windows '9x. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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