Back in the dim and distant past, there was a publication called Practical Web Design. (Some might argue that there still is, but PWD is now a rebadged .net, for reasons far too long, boring and complicated to go into.) I regularly contributed to the magazine, which was, as its moniker suggests, heavily practical and all about web design. To finish each issue on a lighter note, I penned a humorous , ‘ranty’ and inconsistently capitalised column called ‘Web design matters’.

Despite these columns now being about three years old, many of them remain scarily relevant, and so because most people out there will have never seen them, and because my brain’s melted in the heat, thereby stopping me from writing something new today (bar this introduction, obv.), here’s a first dip into the archives, from issue 22 of Practical Web Design, which was unleashed on the world in October 2005. Judging by how many websites now inundate users with stupid noises, it appears that this particular column was digested and thoroughly ignored by many hundreds of awkward and contrary web designers the world over.

(Note: if any publisher wants to resurrect ‘Web design matters’ for their publication, drop me a line.)

As the old saying goes, ‘noise annoys’, but, as Craig Grannell discovers, that’s just how advertisers on the internet want it

The internet reminds me of the town I grew up in: it was once quiet and peaceful, but it’s now noisy and irritating. When I first ventured online, back in the days when you sat astonished as a fledgling search engine offered as many as a few hundred page results for a fairly generic search term, the web was akin to how some claim small children should be: seen, but not heard. Eventually, though, some bright spark got the idea that the web was, in fact, the successor to television.

Soon, every amateur web page stalled while downloading tinny MIDI renditions of long-forgotten pop songs—all for your listening ‘pleasure’. It was horrible, but the idea eventually died out, once people collectively realised that it was rubbish. Sure, some Flash websites still made stupid beeping noises when you rolled your mouse over the navigation links, or played a dated techno loop repeatedly, but for a while most sites were blissfully silent, and those that weren’t and that didn’t include a nifty off switch for the audio were, in my case, ignored entirely.

The thing is, professional organisations and businesses (or at least those that claim to be professional) are now increasingly getting in on the act. Gone are the days when most web users were so astonished to see a banner that they immediately clicked on it. These days, users are so savvy that they even mostly ignore banners dressed up like user-interface elements, or those claiming to be games.

Therefore, advertisers have to make use of an increasing number of attention-grabbing devices, in order to be noticed. Recently, online adverts ballooned in size. Whereas we once had the standard 468×60 pixel banner, we now have such ‘innovations’ as leaderboards; sooner or later, website content will be banished to a small corner of the page, while two-thirds of the screen is generously given over to trying to make you click an advert selling something you don’t really want and certainly don’t need.

But even size doesn’t matter on the web, so Flash has now been recruited to enable the most horrifying thing online since those nasty MIDI files mentioned earlier: advertising banners that make noise. A lot of noise, in fact. These days, I’m finding it’s getting harder to avoid major websites where, all of a sudden, I’m startled by annoying, grating, attention-grabbing sound effects, some of which have even managed to drown out iTunes and, in one particularly annoying example, make me think someone was at the door, due to the banner playing a knocking sound. Of course, none of them ever make me want to click the banner and actually buy something.

The quiet and peaceful internet has now become noisy and irritating, and I suspect the volume level will only drop for good when I’m finally met by an über-banner, which somehow manages to knock me clean off my chair by blasting my eardrums out of my head and deafening me entirely. But I still won’t click that banner.