Nine utterly dreadful things about the new Ireland.com

So Ireland.com, the lavish new website purchased and developed by Tourism Ireland to promote the country during the 12 months of The Gathering and beyond, went live this week.

Not that there was much fanfare. Instead, there was a slackjawed reaction on Twitter and, presumably, further afield as early visitors struggled manfully to find their way around.

So in no particular order, here are nine things wrong with the new Ireland.com.

The dreaded pop-up ... could it really be on the way back?

For a while, about 10 or 11 years ago it became popular for website owners to consider pop-ups as a way to maximise impact.

After all, visitors' eyes might gloss over that banner ad - or, back then, the stack of 120x60 buttons - on either side of your content, but who could fail to notice if a big pop-up exploded across your screen?

Just because you can do something, of course, doesn't mean you should, and the dire effects of this form of communications, whether for the purposes of paid advertising or to draw users' attention to your own products or services - special offers or a newsletter, for example - became apparent very soon.

These days, the old-style browser window pop-up seems to be permanently fenced off in the less savoury porn-and-poker dungeons of the internet.