Jakob Nielsen's latest Alertbox column contains a list of the Web design techniques that most annoy and frustrate users, apart from pop-up adverts. As he admits, there's nothing new here, but that's OK. The problem is gettng idiot Web designers (ie most of them) to pay attention.
Top of the list: Legibility Problems
Bad fonts won the vote by a landslide, getting almost twice as many votes as the #2 mistake. About two-thirds of the voters complained about small font sizes or frozen font sizes; about one-third complained about low contrast between text and background.
As Nielsen observes:
There's much talk about new fancy "Web 2.0" features on the Internet industry's mailing lists and websites, as well as at conferences. But users don't care about technology and don't especially want new features. They just want quality improvements in the basics:
text they can read; content that answers their questions; navigation and search that help them find what they want; short and simple forms (streamlined registration, checkout, and other workflow); and no bugs, typos, or corrupted data; no linkrot; no outdated content.
