20. Surround sound
“I’m surfing the web, bopping my head to my favorite mp3s. I land on your site. Your Flash intro starts up, interrupting my song with some screechy sound effects while your animation seizes control of my browser window, stretching it to weird proportions. I flee.”
Sound effects to your website might sound cool to you, but not to readers who might be surfing in an office cubicle or next to the sleeping baby’s crib.
In general, people loathe embedded sounds, scripts that seize control, and other unexpected disruptions of the natural order of life on the web.
