Web Pages That Suck -- Examples of Bad Web Design

Daily Sucker #1 for Friday, November 16, 2007

Submitter's comments: It is amazing how people don't think of how their web site's name can be taken the wrong way. Despite of what the URL sounds like, it's a car dealership.

Vincent's comments: If your web site is called MENLOVE.com, I don't think you want a tag line of "the last of the little guys." I could be wrong about that, but I doubt it.

Menlove.com

The Worst Web Sites of 2007 #21-30 (Part 3)

I've assembled the third group of contenders for Worst Web Sites of 2007. These sites were selected from Daily Suckers during July through September.

The Worst Web Sites of 2007 #21-30 (Part 3)

Daily Sucker #3 for Thursday, November 15, 2007

Submitter's comments: Vincent: As an escape from the impending final exams at my law school, much of the student body has become obsessed with reading these hilarious theories of reptilians that secretly rule the earth.

None of us take it seriously, but we're all intrigued with the complexities of this particular brand of wacko. These theorists sit around and zoom in on videos and search for look for reptilian features in politicians' eyes as proof of their reptilian nature. They then post these videos on Youtube with creepy and/or annoying background music.

Also, none of these conspiracy theorists seems capable of crafting a good web site.

The similar structure of all the reptilian Illuminati theory pages follows:

1. An obviously unprofessional look/appearance/ambiance guaranteed to attract only persons with absolutely no skills in source validation.
2. Large blobs of text ordered non sequentially to run five miles down the page.
3. Links to additional, definite proof of the reptilian-alien conspiracy to rule humanity.
4. (Optional) Google Adsense ads placed at the bottom to ensure that they make no money while building crappy web sites.

P.S. If you're secretly a reptilian alien Illuminati, please don't come for me.

Vincent's comments: I'm not a reptilian alien Illuminati. My wife believes any reptile would be two steps up from what she thinks I am (which I can't repeat).

KidsToday™ have it soooooo easy. For the first three years of my college career, the Internet didn't exist. We had to make do with loud music and soft drugs. Or was it soft music and loud drugs?

For those of you who want a "non-partisan" site for background on the reptilian conspiracy, try this Wikipedia page.

http://www.thewatcherfiles.com/exposing_reptilians.htm
http://www.greatdreams.com/reptlan/reps.htm
http://www.crystalinks.com/reptilians.html

Daily Sucker #2 for Thursday, November 15, 2007

Submitter's comments: It's pretty horrible.

Vincent's comments: In keeping with our accidental theme of "college pages that suck," here's a site about a utensil used by many college students — except these items are collectible.

I don't think I've ever seen such horrid navigation that was labeled so clearly.

1001 Pens

Daily Sucker #1 for Thursday, November 15, 2007

Submitter's comments: There's another pretty bad set of web pages from our old friends at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (the people that brought you that visual whatever Flash-based site). This one is supposed to publicly display the results of student evaluations of their instructors, but whomever set up the web pages did a poor job.

Even some of the students have recently expressed disdain over the poor quality of the web site in an article entitled, Clean up on aisle common sense, saying that the web site hasn't been updated "since spring 2006." Well, they did update it, but it's no better than the previous one. In fact, it looks like it hasn't been updated since 1996.

Here's the original site. The link to the "new" site is at the top and takes you to the New Course Evaluation Homepage.

Problems with this site include, but not limited to:

1. Drop-right menus.
2. Black background.
3. Table rows that change to a black background with dark red lettering when you hover your mouse over one.
4. Overly ambiguous table headers, such as "stimulating," "organized,"
5. "Overall S.D.," etc.
6. With how they constructed the frames, depending on your screen size and resolution, (I use 1280 x 1024.) you have to scroll to the BOTTOM of the page, scroll the table to the right, then go back up if you are looking at something close to the top.
7. Oh, and if you think those table headers are hyperlinks when you hover your mouse over them, (I thought they were.) wrong! They just simply order the table alphabetically or numerically, depending on the header.

I don't know what else to say. They could have used SSI or ever basic JavaScript, but instead ... it just blows my mind. I figured I should bring this to your attention.

Vincent's comments: I'd just like to add that the menu items are centered.

Course Evaluations - ASM — Old site
ASM Course Evaluations — New Site

Daily Sucker for Friday, November 9, 2007

Submitter's comments: I came across this manufacturing web site. You don't have to go far to find several issues with their web design:

1. It has "Welcome to..." on their web site.
2. It has a poor contrast. i.e. white text on the black background.
3. The audio/music plays automatically.
4. The navigation menu follows you when you scroll.

To make matters worse, this web site. automatically refreshes your browser...every 20 to 25 seconds on their homepage!! Luckily, they don't do that on other navigational links.

Vincent's comments: Actually, white text on black background isn't a no-no and AccessColor thinks the site is all right (as far as contrast goes).

I'm really tired of the 1996 globe and I hate the menus that follow you around (of course, I could make a witty statement about how this is like the Chinese government, but I won't). I'm also a little freaked out by the page refresh — especially when the page yells out at me.

MH Manufacturing

Daily Sucker for Thursday, November 8, 2007

Submitter's comments: I recently found your web site and have used your tips frequently in revamping our company's web site The downside is now I can really see how bad some web sites are.

Enjoy this rainbow colored mystery meat.

It took me a bit to figure it out - play with the colors a bit, then click. It'll bring up a random (I think random) item of that color. Click on it again to maximize. If you wait a moment it'll tell you that you can "Throw" the items around.

It's sort of like a Flash lava lamp.

Vincent's comments: Ignorance is bliss because the downside of knowledge is pain.

Etsy's home page has normal ways to find handmade items to buy. Just look at "Categories" and all the sub-categories listed underneath. Gee, it's logical. Then you have "Colors," which is the page that was submitted, and it makes no sense at all. Equally weird is "Time Machine" and "Connections." Connections seems to be a random person's Mystery Meat-based wish list. Why I would want to buy items for a random person escapes me. Most of the site escapes me.

Etsy.com — select by color

Daily Sucker for Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Submitter's comments: I was doing research on upgrading projects from Visual Studio 2003 to 2005, and I came across this monstrosity. This is easily the biggest botch of an attempt to convey information I have seen in a site. Things to note:

1. Annoyingly long and worthless flash intro.
2. The actual content takes up only about 2% of the screen; not even the top-left 2%, mind you, but down near, but not at, the bottom-right corner. (I guess if you find it, you get some sense of accomplishment). About 5% of the screen is dedicated to an awful navigation bar, leaving 93% for -- not much of anything, to be honest.
3. Navigation which is (a) side-scrolling, (b) runs away from the cursor, and (c) is just a list of numbers instead of something useful.
4. No organization of the information at all. 400 features to look through, good luck finding what you want.
5. The page is in English, despite the 'germany' subdomain. (not that it would be useful in any language).

Vincent's comments: Life would be so much simpler if the information was provided in a form we could understand.

Microsoft Visual Studio 400 Differences

Daily Sucker #3 for Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Submitter's comments: Zaha Hadid won the "Nobel Prize" of architecture so I went to her web site. If her architecture is as bad as her web site., you'll never be able to get into - or out of - her buildings.

I thought the MOMA site was bad. This one is dark, forbidding, impossible to read (the text is too small), absolutely can't be navigated— you have to chase around with the mouse and hope that maybe you'll run over something that might tell you where to go... but then whatever you might have caused to appear on the screen disappears again! I sought out the beloved "skip intro" link only to watch it fade away before my very eyes. Whaaaa!!!

Vincent's comments: Well, it's nice to see a woman win the "Nobel Prize" for architecture and it's nice to see that a female architect is just as stupid and dense about her web site as men.

I love that the page title is "index."

Good God, what's wrong with these people?

Zaha-Hadid Architects

Daily Sucker #2 for Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Submitter's comments: I wonder what would you say about this web site. Huge flash, on my 128kb DSL every link takes about 30 seconds to load.

Look at this page about the 1984 Olympics. If you have luck you'll see an Olympic tower almost completely covered with a table in the middle of the screen. Ironically, Jerde employs probably the best architects on this planet.

Vincent's comments: I love Flash sites that aren't intelligent enough to know how to get rid of the "Click to activate this control" message.

It's a another fricking architect's web site. To truly appreciate the Olympics page mentioned above, you have to scroll down the page.

This site isn't as bad as your average architect, which is like saying "For a fat boy, you don't sweat much."

The Jerde Partnership

Daily Sucker #1 for Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Submitter's comments: My nominee isn't "artist's" site per se: it's for an architectural firm: (a 'top' one according to their peers apparently). So while they are "arty," Architects define themselves as 'Professionals,' and I view them more as members of a Guild.

I went to this site to learn more about the architect's residential designs, and was rewarded with what is basically a Flash-enabled business card and press release. Things I found that really bugged me, and made me wonder why I would ever want to have a house designed by anyone who thought this was good design include:

1. There is no opting out of the Flash-intro-cum-splash-page for an HTML version. The site is all Flash, all the time, from what I can tell.
2. The intro gives the viewer definitions of "light" "time", and "place" and ties them to abstract icons. When you get into the main page of the site, the viewer sees the icons and if the viewer moves the mouse over them, they gratuitously transform into the words they represent. That's it. The relevance of "light-time-place" is established on the right side of the flash movie with some 'duh' statement about how all are important to the architect.
3. The navigation is about the clumsiest I've seen for so little depth and content. I can click or mouseover on any one of several navigation elements: Mystery Meat photos in a grid, tiny text boxes and left hand navigation menu (all flash). It goes almost nowhere you want to go (Don't hit the back button to get to the home page, it will send you to the intro again)....and it goes nowhere in every direction.
4. Content: Resume? Check. Awards? Check. Product? Very little. The few projects shown are not very well represented. The photos aren't very descriptive and the accompanying text is stingy with details.

I guess when you're a "Top 100" architect, you have to have a web site--you just don't have to have a very good one.

Vincent's comments: I think I'm just going to call sites like this one "High End, Art-Fart Architectural" web sites.

David Coleman / Architecture

Daily Sucker #2 for Monday, November 5, 2007

Submitter's comments: I just ran across this horrible site for Marshall & Ogletree, builders of digital church organs.

Some points:

1. It has an absolutely useless splash page.
2. All text on the homepage is hidden in graphics...
3. ...which are repeating themselves.
4. And do I still need to say that they use frames for their navigation?

Vincent's comments: I can't believe that in the last month I've run into two web sites that use graphics for the complete web page. What is going on here? Is somebody taken the "design your site in Photoshop" concept and forgotten that HTML is an important part of the page?

Marshall & Ogletree

Daily Sucker #1 for Monday, November 5, 2007

Submitter's comments: I don't recall seeing any airport sites listed on Webpages That Suck.

Here's one for you. (and where there's one, there's probably a lot more.)

It took me a minute to figure out that the first picture is the navigation. (Mystery Meat Navigation [MMN] of course...)

Vincent's comments: Seems like there was one a long time ago, but I don't remember which airport.

Why, in the name of all that's holy? do we have such tacky MMN? I realize it's called "Love" field, but do we really need the hearts?

Dallas/Love Field

Daily Sucker for Friday, November 2, 2007

Submitter's comments: Here's another one for the record books (if it isn't in there already).

This practically breaks every rule of good web design. I wonder who thinks this would be a good idea? Gotta love the title of the homepage too, "index."

Vincent's comments: The site is Project Justice for Animals. The links are, at best, vague descriptions "A story," "Reality," etc. I don't have the nerve to click them. The home page is a mess.

Project Justice for Animals

"Washoe, a Chimp of Many Words, Dies at 42"

Washoe, a female chimpanzee from Africa, was the first non-human primate to learn sign language. She died Tuesday night. I mention this because my daughter spent seven quarters working with Washoe and her brood — Tatu, Dar, and Loulis — and came away a better person for the experience.

As Dr. Mary Lee Jensvold told the New York Times "(Washoe) kept an eye on the habits — and footwear — of her human companions. 'She always checked out your shoes, and if you had new ones she’d sign for you to show them to her,' Dr. Jensvold said. 'Then she might sign something about the color. She was a real shoe lady that way.'

I learned about Washoe and her interest in shoes at an event called a "Chimposium" at Central Washington University. You would learn about chimpanzees in the first part of the event and then you got to go and see the four chimps (from behind a very thick bulletproof glass. Seriously, these chimps could rip you apart.).

At one chimposium, Washoe saw my shoes and got excited. The guide told me to put my feet on the edge of the glass so Washoe could get a better look. When she got a better look, she jumped up and down and signed "shoes - fire." Washoe then motioned she wanted my shoes. I wish I had known the sign for "Sorry."

My daughter and I will be attending a memorial service for Washoe on November 12.

Daily Sucker #2 for Thursday, November 1, 2007

Submitter's comments: Pretty bad with the graphical links — some serious Mystery Meat Navigation combined with a load time for each graphic when you mouseover a link.

Vincent's comments: WTF is it with Architecture web sites? I used to have a great deal of respect for the industry, but I think...I don't know what I think other than these people are one floor short of a complete building.

The sub-pages appear to be OK, except that the navigation fails the contrast test:

Foreground:#FFFFFF Background:#BABABA

Fail (The contrast ratio is: 1.91)

Text or diagrams and their background must have a luminosity contrast ratio of at least 5:1 for level 2 conformance to guideline 1.4,and text or diagrams and their background must have a luminosity contrast ratio of at least 10:1 for level 3 conformance to guideline 1.4.

Notice that they don't use MMN on the sub-pages. Hmm. This implies that either it's wrong to use MMN on the first page or their visitors are too stupid to have memorized the links on the front page to use them on the sub-pages.

MIT Architecture

Daily Sucker #1 for Thursday, November 1, 2007

Submitter's comments: If you are going to have a site this controversial, at least employ decent web design.

I am using a monitor with a resolution of 1280x1024, and when I go to the site I am greeted with a "splash page" in the form of a poem that takes up the browser's entire viewport so that I have to scroll way down to get to the actual content. This "splash page" also includes a poor-quality audio file that has the site's owner speaking that begins playing as soon as the page is loaded.

Thankfully an on/off button exists. The rest of the site is the usual too many fonts and colors, lack of organization, et cetera.

Vincent's comments: Yeah, it sucks, but for one of those "controversial" sites it's pretty tame. What do I mean by "controversial?" Oh, some of the best sites would be:

• Accept Jesus, Forever Forgiven!
• Jesus Christ is the ONLY way to heaven!
• The Non-Moving Earth and Anti-Evolution Web Page
• The Earth is Not Moving
• Time Cube
• Space Ark
• Creation Museum, Taxidermy Hall of Fame of NC and Antique Tool Museum

I thought this was a Buddhist-based blasphemy, but it turns out the top section changes religions. I'm not sure how often, perhaps daily. Right now, it looks Christian.

Celibacy, Meditation, and Enlightenment