Comments on: How To Make A Really Irritating Website

By: Nick Pendrell

Nick Pendrell — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 23:43:55 +0000

Actually the extension for dialling international lines is one thing where us Brits are ‘normal’ (unlike our habit of driving on the wrong side of the road). It’s the Americans who are the odd ones out by having to dial 011 instead of the standard 00:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_call_prefixes

Looking through this list, I can see that the French have changed over the years. I remember being in a cheap hotel in Cannes during my film biz days in the late 80’s and screaming at the receptionist about what a useless, shitty hotel they had because I couldn’t get an international line no matter how hard I tried. I was quite embarrassed when I learned that, in those days, you had to dial something weird like 33 to get an international line while I was trying the standard 00.

By: David Hamill

David Hamill — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 19:28:26 +0000

Nice post very funnily written. The method you use to dial another country depends on the country you’re in and not the one you’re dialling (other than the bit at the end). From my understanding its us Brits who are different than most other countries.

By: Nick Pendrell

Nick Pendrell — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:28:32 +0000

Glad to hear that I’m not the only one who get irritated at the hoops these people make us non-Americans climb through to sign up.

Actually I forgot to mention one of my other pet peeves about websites in this piece and this is when I read something like “this website is best viewed at a screen resolution of 800×600 using Internet Explorer 5″.

So fucking what? Do you really expect me to change my screen resolution and browser just so your lame website won’t look quite so lame? Fuck off – if you were any good as a web designers you’d stop being so bloody lazy and make a site that works perfectly well no matter what you browser or screen resolution is.

Luckily these messages seem to be dying out now – so there is some progress being made out there.

By: Pamela

Pamela — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:48:14 +0000

You have so eloquently voiced feelings I’ve had for quite a number of years. My pet hate is when you find those US-specific formats that don’t allow us folk from “other countries” to complete forms.

By: Nick Pendrell

Nick Pendrell — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 02:14:51 +0000

I didn’t mean to seem anti-American in this posting – that wasn’t the idea at all. It’s just that, as America probably represents (I’m guessing here) 80% of all e-commerce revenues, it is easy for them to forget about the 20% non-American business.

Conversely, websites that are based outside the US tend to be more aware of the fact that non-US business can be significant and so design their sites accordingly.

By: ray web hosting

ray web hosting — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 21:39:26 +0000

I think you know very well how a good site should be done. And I agree with all the points, however, I think you went a little over board with Americans and all that. I hope you understand what I mean. I guess you find people designing such sites all over the world.