What users hate most

[chicgeek]

Originally Posted by DaveyBoy

I'm not a fan of flash-built web sites either.

I just made a friend rebuild his header because he could have done what he did in flash with streamlined CSS. He's my bitch.

[spyderscripts]

Originally Posted by JamieJelly

cool, what languages do you know?

As of right now, I know Perl (and Perl CGI) to a teaching level..

I read through 1/2 of a PHP book and was flabbergasted with it and ended up giving it away on CraigsList.

I know a bit of JavaScript and am currently learning Java (if there were only more hours in the day).

Some game programming with TGE-- pretty neat but not very user friendly.

Also on the learning plate:
.net and all the flavors of such

ASP

and C

[LazyJim]

Simple forms that ask for your email address, followed on the next page by a longer form, or a form requiring payment or credit card details.

That's just like a lie, they make an offer, require a short form to be filled out, take my email address, then change the cost after you're already half-commited!

High profile examlpe is O'riely book club thingy where you view samples of their books online.

[waffles]

Site's that are obviously made by noobs. Not that I think mine is perfect, but I don't have the free guestbook/counter/tagboard/forum/calendar/etc. all over the place. I hate the how they like bright colors on top of blright colors. I hate how their site about cars is also for their favorite cartoon and a memorial to their cat that's been dead for 3 months. I hate all of the cool things that by themselves aren't bad, but when it's one on top of another all over the place....

It makes me angry.

[spyderscripts]

So you're against personal web pages then?

[waffles]

I guess I did make it sound that way. But I'm not.

If it's supposed to be abotu your car, make it about your car. That's all I really meant.

I was looking at a really bad one when I wrote that. Probably had a bigger influence than I thought.

[spyderscripts]

I do agree about the guestbook/counter thing and believe it or not, some lesser-known small companies still use visible counters for who knows what reason. It just looks really tacky.

[spyderscripts]

"Dunno what that person's beef is with PHP sites, if joomla, drupal et al were created in ASP, would you then hate that? Just because it's popular doesn't mean you have to hate it. Lay the blame with lazy users, not the site's technology."

Sorry, missed a whole page of posts..

PHP is training wheels without the bike (quote from a massively trafficed web page) and was created for lazy people to "program" without having to learn how to "program". It was set up so there's zero learning curve so that anyone who picks up a book can create a PHP script in less than an hour. Not a HELLO world script, a contact form or a simple guestbook. Yes, the language is that simplistic due to the uneccesary and unsecure amount of built-in functions!

Now I don't know PHP, I only read part of a book a few years ago but I took on a bet last night that I could create a contact form from scratch within 20 minutes. Now this may not seem like a hard task for you PHP coders, but coming from someone who knows virtually nothing of it to make a complete and functional contact form in 18 minutes is ridiculous.

Do I hate PHP because it's easy? Not so much. I have a hatred for it because people who know PHP consider themselves coders when the whole reason behind PHP was so you didn't have to learn any coding. It's all been done for you if you memorize the syntax and the 1600+ functions.

It's because of this most PHP scripts are extremely insecure. You don't have to know much to get it to work and with the billion PHP scripts floating around from users who aren't technically coders, it's a huge security issue.

[JuggoPop]

Instead of complaining and trying to get the world to change to another language, why not use your "real coding skills" to help the php community make things better.

to come here and say

I have a hatred for it because people who know PHP consider themselves coders when the whole reason behind PHP was so you didn't have to learn any coding. It's all been done for you if you memorize the syntax and the 1600+ functions.

is insulting to all the coders here that use php as one of thier tools.

I taught myself LISP programming about 10 years ago so I could make programs for autoCAD... I've messed around with a few other programming languages and syntax and function memorziation is basicly how anyone programs in any program language.

Speaking the english language even involves that process.

As far as my online pet peeves... I was going to make a joke and say "any site they uses text" just to be funny, but now I think I'll just keep my real peeve to myself.

[DaveyBoy]

Originally Posted by JuggoPop

but now I think I'll just keep my real peeve to myself.

It's 'spyderscripts' isn't it

[spyderscripts]

What I said wasn't meant to be insulting towards anyone who uses PHP. All I did was answer the OP's question on what is our PEEVES of cyberspace. I said PHP, that's it.

Then everyone else started a debate on it, which I suppose is a good thing considering this is a web community.

My opinion is PHP is not a worthy language for a so-called web programmer or scripter who has experience in more robust languages. I've never met someone who came from another language to PHP in my web development career and I used to teach classes among some of the brightest scripters and programmers around. I have heard of users going from learning PHP up to a different language, such as ASP or Perl, however.

If you like PHP that's fine, I'm not here to change your minds on the matter. If I do, that's great but if not, that's okay, too. While large companies are not migrating to PHP, it's opening up more options for the other coders without all the competition there is for basic web sites.

[digiweb]

Dude, you're just wrong about this stuff.

Lots of good coders use PHP.

PHP is no more insecure than ASP.

There's not a language in the world that is safe.

We used to have the exact same complaint about Visual Basic that you have about PHP but we still wrote some kick ass VB programs while the noobees ruined the language's reputation.

Tons of large companies use PHP.

Many so-called robust languages package huge amounts of functionality into single statements. Only assembly language has a one-to-one correspondence to machine language so by your standards the only pure language is assembly language, all the other languages package things for loser coders.

I have written in machine code, PDP-11 assembler, IBM 3090 assembler, COBOL, C, C++, Java, ASP/VBSCript, PHP, ASP.Net, C#, VB.Net, VBA and JavaScript.

I have taught ASP.Net, C#, VB.Net, ADO.Net and Visual Basic.

As I mentioned above there is no such thing as a safe programming language that's built on a C-Language foundation.

You can make the same case against ASP and JSP that you're making against PHP. And I am agreeing with you on this point very, very much. My customers think that markup and coding are the same thing, they think they can code, and they're wrong on both counts.

For 10 years Visual Basic was the most productive language on the planet. I used it to create advertising systems that sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. And my doctor quit his job to use it to build some doctor-thingy program.

You are correct, PHP does not have enough barriers to entry. And if my experience and your opinion are representative of the marketplace then I think you are predicting the demise of PHP's reputation.

But this is the most important point of this post: PHP is a beautiful language that elegantly does what it says and works without my kicking the shit out of it first.

The problem is not the gun. The problem is that our culture invites the whacko wield the gun.

[vtechno42]

Originally Posted by CarolineBogart

But this is the most important point of this post: PHP is a beautiful language that elegantly does what it says and works without my kicking the shit out of it first.

The problem is not the gun. The problem is that our culture invites the whacko wield the gun.

Dang! *applauds with reckless abandon* that was just.... so beautiful... *sheds a single tear for effect* I really couldn't agree more.

Anyhow... another huge graphic design beef of mine is when images are resized via height/width HTML values instead of the designer taking their time to get the fricking sizes right the first time. It aliases and looks absolutely HIDEOUS. Animated GIFs look even worse when resized...

Granted, it's not as bad as bad color choices (bright on brighter) or asstons of blinking icons (glitter graphics=complete and utter useless crap), but in tandom with that breed of webflotsam and netjetsom, it makes me want to scratch out my eyeballs and frappeé them into biopaste...

[waffles]

I'm going to admit that I've done that. But, I also took the time to get the proportions right. So it wasn't as bad. Still bad, but better.

I don't like monochromatic stuff. Mostly. Grey is fine, especially when they put black in. But something like this where eveything is blue? That's just crazy.

[LazyJim]

spyderscripts, aside from the low barrier to entry of PHP use allowing more insecure web sites to be created, you have no reason to hate PHP. To not use PHP websites seems a bit over paranoid, but that's up to you.

Thing I really disagree with is your elitist ideas about 'reall programming' -

PHP is training wheels without the bike (quote from a massively trafficed web page) and was created for lazy people to "program" without having to learn how to "program".

- you should remember the idea is to produce a working program, not to mess about programing this that and the other before you get to the parts that do the job you actually want, or not to mess about managing memory allocations when you could be programing a relevant routine.

Why do you think we progressed from machine code and assembly language, and continue to progress through more generations of language? - To free up the programmer to program the relevant bits and ignore the more menial tasks involved with programing! (and to allow programing in a more natural language too of course, but that amounts to the same thing).

Instead of discouraging use of PHP why not encourage responsible use of PHP?

I say this as a computer science graduate, and would point out that I got into computers because they were supposed to be a multipurpose machine reprogramable to compute whatever you want, I saw the oppertunity to create tools for people to use, not the oppertunity to program. It is the end result that matters not what language you used.

[helloworld]

Originally Posted by spyderscripts

Disliking PHP sites isn't really narrow, it's just an opinion I have towards webmasters who use it. Like I said, it's not so bad if the webmaster uses a PHP script like a contact form. It's when the web site IS php where I get all aggitated.

If it's completely PHP, more often than not (maybe not on this board, but in general) the web master did nothing to make the site except for adding content to a script. To me, that's not being a webmaster.

I guess my point is this: it's fine to have a site use PHP, it's not fine to have PHP use your site!

I would use perl, but I perfer not to fall asleep at the keyboard

[Thanol]

I hate websites with bright or contrasting color schemes, they make me want to dig my eyeballs out of their sockets.

[jeet]

There's no need to use a fixed width of 760 px when you have all this stylesheet features handy...
Example go to second link in my signature, (use 800 screen size), Now resize your screen. It automatically fits...

Basically when you fix the screen size to be 760, either you are compromising on your choice of banner design/ size or leaving a large empty space at the right side of screen when website is viewed in 1024 size.

Originally Posted by JamieJelly

I just use a fixed width of 760px, that will deal with 800x600 users perfectly. No horizontal scrolling needed.

[JuggoPop]

fixed width allows you to make sure things are going to stay where you want them... fluid sites can look pretty jacked on a 25" widescreen with high resoultion. I just dragged your site across my two monitors and it flows ok, when really wide, but at some point you lose control of exactly what the end user will see (in a fluid design).

[chicgeek]

I much prefer fixed width, both for viewing and designing.