I have come to the conclusion that most websites out there seem to not take into account much for usuability and just throw in stupid crap to make their website 'cool' to attract more users. One example of this of course if flash. I have become so intolerant of flash that I avoid it like the plague as much as I can, until I am forced to use it, usually when logging onto my isp's website. Is ther no actual guideline for good website design? And if not, there should be!

Ok, so this first part is about flash:

Seriously, is flash so god-dammned necessary now? I mean, when I go to a website, I go there for information, NOT to look at some resource consuming site, because the web designer thinks it would attract more users. Even though I also use my dual core notebook, I still hate going onto sites that have flash. Now, the way I see it, is that flash has a very dubious role on websites, and sites that should only use flash, is mostly entertainment sites, and sites geared towards mostly kids, which this is fine. If I am going to log onto mtv, or cartoon network, yes I am going to encounter flash, and that is fine, but now even companies are using it, and I can't see how it helps the user. Major companies like verizon, comcast (now time warner), anything that is service related has flash, well guess what, I didn't come here to look at your intros, I want information, but instead, I am forced to have my resources hogged by flash, which most of the time, doesn't work very well anyways. Hell, I even actually like going onto Microsoft's site, why? NO FLASH! At least at the very front page, which is aspx.

I.E support only:

This has to do mainly with online courses at a college/uni. I have taken a few courses online, and I have a friend that is takes most of her courses online, and unfortunately for both of us, we have to use I.E. Why is that? Why when I am taking a course online, must I be tied down to only I.E and have to use plugins that require activeX? This seems like laziness of the developer of the online courses to support better web browsers, and use plugins that hardly even work correctly in the first place.

Now I haven't really done a website in a very very long time, oh at least 8 years or so ago, but this is really logical, and perhaps web designers out there that make sites for businesses and such should really ask themselves this question before posting up a site: Is the visitor really interested in using a flash player based site, using transitions to different areas of that site, or does the user want a more direct approach, because the user needs information? I think of course it is the latter.

Flash does have it's place on the web, but as far as I'm concerned, not on service related sites, and businesses. Leave flash only for the kids and entertainment sites only.

There is homestarrunner, an appropriate use of flash - and very well done. But on the whole, you're right. Flash is grossly over-implemented (or just grossly implemented, as the case may be).

IE only really burns my britches. The Yahoo media links are now IE only.

You know what really burns my buttons is how gmail doesn't support Konquerer
and yes I hate websites that over use flash especially in adverts and adverts really make me angry its not so bad when I use firefox but when I use Konquerer it really makes me angry

I'm hoping that AJAX will lead to less flash usage, since the majority of irritating flash seems to be there to make a dynamic menu, which AJAX can do. And JS has far, far wider support than Flash. No plugins to hunt down, for a start.

One thing you're a little mistaken on - when designing a website, the developer's not designing so much for the user as the customer. It is the customer's definition of 'well designed' and 'user friendly', not the user's, that they have to follow.

I think gmail is a very good example of how webpages should be. You see, even if you use an unsupported browser, you can still use gmail entirely. What is really bad is when surfing sites that if you don't have flash, you can't do a anything.

And I will not say what I really think about Konqueror, because it may lead into a flamebait and I have a couple already running

Certainly, Google stands as a demonstration of the simple fact that restraint is often the best indicator of "good design."

A friend of mine once said, "you know, a really good website is like a really good toilet: you go to it, you do your business and then you move on. You don't notice or care about the thing, and you certainly don't want to, unless it quits working."

It is interesting to see all the replies and it seems that I am just 'preaching to the choir' here. I can remember just how much annoyed I was when Java took over the use of java script, and looking back on it now, I don't mind it as much, and while I don't like java because of it's speed, I would concede to using java instead of flash.

Thats the worst. If they want to use adverts. animated gifs should be used, not flash video.

You are right, but as a customer, if the site is bogged by flash and I can't get to where I need to get to on the site, I don't consider it to be user friendly at all.

What annoys me most about Flash is how it breaks my keyboard shortcuts. I can't Control-L to get to the location bar or Control-Tab to get to the next tab.

Or control-w to close a tab.

Hell when I load pages with my mobile and see that the average page seems to be around 500k these days it makes me wonder if all those adverts guys should pay me (at least) half of my connection cost.

The worst thing ever, IMHO, for web developpement, is when people taking courses on it (be it online, from a friend, in highschool or whatever, with Jav, JS, AJAX, PHP, ASP, XHTML+CSS, XML, etc.) only test in IE, or worse, are forced into IE.

I have that problem at school right now, my media tech (Whatever they meant by that) teacher cut the original project (Make a movie, post in flash, add comments) to two smaller projects, but if they include developping a site, forgive me for crude language, but she's shitting me if she thinks IE6 (Not even 7!) will give an accurate portrail of what a site looks like to the average person.

That said, does anyone know if Dreamweaver (it's there, and it's the only thing with syntax highlighting) uses a real engine (Gecko, Presto, KHTML) to check its coding or a real stinker? (Trident)

I have a personal vendetta against PHP and ASP sites, but some, like this one do a good job, and it isn't filled with useless glitter like alot are.

This is quite possibly one of the main reasons for poor web design. Is that it is blatently taught in courses, whether or not the instructor knowingly or unknowingly contributes to this. If they choose to use I.E as one of their main browsers, I might not have a problem with that if they would at least MENTION the fact that because the class is forced to use I.E, that the assignments would not work properly in other broswers, but still this is poor teaching. It is unfortunately the same with programming courses, because the compiler in windows is Microsft's Visual Studio, and my programming teacher is guilty of this last semester when I took the course, and although I was allowed to use any C++ compiler, the instructor insisted that we hand in assignments in the Visual Studio format.

It is unfortunate that all of this is because Microsoft also has it's foot inside education, because you see it in both web and programming courses. When you take a programming course, you are working in Visual Studio, (unless it is a Java course, it is NetBeans) when you are taking a web course, most likely you are exposed to Front Page, C#, I.E,

Here is my explanation, (this model can apply to many other situations):

1. We have a suit who needs a Web site and he wants it to be extra special.

2. We have a trained Web designer who knows what makes a good Web site and what does not. He also wants to put food on his family.

Says businessman to Web designer:

"I want a Web site like this...oh, and I want it all blinky."

Thanks the Web designer:

"Man, that is really lame..but hey, I can charge more for putting blinky stuff in the page, so why argue?"

Says the Web designer:

"I will have a mockup ready by Wednesday."

When teaching web technologies there is normally a conflict between what the instructor wants on the computer and what the technicians are prepared to install. Looking after a lab of computers is no trivial task and the technicians wish to keep it as simple as possible. Which is often why the choice is limited.

Depending upon the level of the students and the objectives of the course I would say that working with a single browser is acceptable. Talking about what a site should look like should be an integral part of any course but despite emphasising upon this point I would still get students bathing their sites in gaudy colours. It is a difficult balancing act of encouraging the enthusiasm and controlling some of the extremes that are possible with HTML/CSS colours alone!

I agree with the OP. Websites that use flash for pretty much everything are a complete waste of bandwidth. I also hate pages that seem to cover the front page with megabytes worth of images. (For example: http://www.supanet.com my ISP page.)
And pages that won't let me use anything but IE. Why can't we start getting schools to teach people the basics of making web pages not using a tool that splatters broken HTML everywhere (Frontpage) and start using either a decent program that won't moronify the HTML or leave huge great big stacks of useless meta data at the top. Or they could use an ordinary text editor. (Notepad, Vim, etc.)

(Reason for edits: Didn't explain myself fully. and I had to sweep up some typos.)