Most of the websites created at the beginning of the web's mainstream popularity looked really terrible. These sites have been left untouched and not updated since then. These sites look really bad on the modern browsers. Some of the designers who are still living in the past still design websites with the same look. This should be avoided under all circumstances.

* Don't Use Animated GIFs
Animated GIFs have become obsolete today. In the past, it was commonly used as it allow animations to be inserted as simply as the normal graphics. It has now become quite unpopular due to the limited number of colors that     can be used on it as well as its jarring appearance. The early web's stock animations should be particularly avoided.

* Text in Graphics
Avoid text as much as possible in Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro with the exception of logos or headings. It is completely impractical as even the text sometimes takes a long time to download. Also, it restricts the people from selecting or manipulating it in any way. This text is also badly aligned, and compressed, which makes it look even worse.

Always keep the text plain and use graphics for pictures. Use of the text as a graphic is always a bad idea.

* Bad Backgrounds
There are numerous websites with terrible backgrounds. Often a color that doesn't provide enough contrast with the text is used which makes the text difficult to read. Sometimes, a small pattern is tiled to fill the entire background which often makes the site totally unusable.

The best color to use as the background is white. However, if you want a different color, make sure you choose a color that people can read the text over. Never repeat a pattern more than once.

* System Requirements
Earlier, listing the system requirements on the websites was considered necessary, but it is not so now. The sites used to mention things such as “best viewed at 800×600 using IE4”. It is obvious that no one would switch their browsers to view a web page.

Most of the websites stopped to use them after the end of the Internet Explorer/ Netscape war. But some sites still hold them. They do nothing but make the site look outdated.

* Open in New Window
In the beginning of the Internet's boom, graphic designers used to design web pages in a way that offered them full control over everything. Going to a site gave them a message such as 'click here to launch', which would open a new window without the browser's toolbars.

This technique is specially useless now because most people have pop-up blockers installed on their browsers. Therefore, a number of people will not be able to see the site if it is designed that way.