We visit alot of webpages - on average, hundreds per day - which allows us to peruse some of the best and the worst websites on the Internet. There's some amazing sites out there, along with alot of stinkers. Now we're not just talking about funky color choices and graphics that are maybe not a designer's dream. We are talking about website features that really and truly drive us to poking pencils in our eyes - and ears!

In honor of the New Year, we have complied this list of Top 10 Most Annoying Website Features that Make Us Mental (in no particular order). Let's hope we see less and less of these things as 2007 progresses.

1. Websites that have only an image as the front page, no matter how cool it is. We have better things to do than wait for a 300KB image to load just so we can click 'enter'.


2. Websites that are nothing more than link repositories. You know the ones. You get there, see all the great links to articles and stuff. Yes! Then you click one. And immediately get punted to another site! Which is often another link repository! Whose stellar idea was that?


3. Clicking on a link and having it pop up another browser window. Even though it's part of the same site! This really fries our noodles. We want our pages to load where we want them. If we want them to open in another window, we'll open a new tab/window ourselves. Afraid of visitors leaving your site? Write something useful!


4. YouTube and the people who load their websites with it. Especially when they have nothing else of value on it. There's a lot of offenders out there. If we want to see YouTube, we'll go directly to their site rather than choking on the webmaster's lack of anything to say.


5. Tunes of any kind playing in the background. We have had instances where, when browsing multiple tabs and having one loading in the background, suddenly some cheesy Michael Bolton song cranks up at full volume and causes us to wet our pants.....not due to laughter! This is even worse when we can't shut it off and it keeps looping and looping while we go crazy trying to kill the offending serenade.......the only thing to do is shut it down. Not surprisingly, most sites like this usually have no worthwhile content, so we haven't really missed out on anything.


6. Talking anything. We didn't come to a webpage to hear somebody's graphics quacking, snorting, grunting or growling, no matter how cool they think it is. It's like having some annoying little weasel sitting on our shoulder nattering away in our ear.


7. Websites that are built entirely out of Flash. We can't stress enough how much we hate them. Nothing could be more annoying. Guaranteed page closers. Needless to say, we don't make these for clients either.


8. Websites that won't allow us to copy text, links, etc. All we can get is a ridiculous pop-up window telling us that right clicking is disabled. Okay, so if we'd like to mention on our website an article the author wrote, giving our visitors a teaser and a link back to their site, they don't want the extra traffic....ooookay. What if we want to right click a link to open another page in a new tab/window? Save a URL? Right click to bookmark? Sorry, no can do. The thing we find most amusing is that if somebody really wants to pilfer the content, they can always get it from the source code.


9. The five mile long blog with hundreds of categories in the sidebar along with hundreds more links in their 'blogroll'. We have no intention of staying long enough on a site like this to scroll down the mammoth list of garbage. Just because it's a blog doesn't mean it shouldn't be well-organized or user-friendly. It's even worse if the content area is half empty or you click on one of the tags/categories and get...you guessed it...an empty page! Utterly useless. Thanks but no thanks.


10. Websites that require javascript that will not even load to tell you that javascript is required for the page to display properly. We just get a blank page. Bloody brilliant webmasters! We use javascript but you can still access our site even if you're blocking scripts, although the layout may not look as nice.