Web Pages That Suck - learn good web design by looking at bad web design

I’m not the only person who recognizes that architects have problems with their web sites. treehugger takes architects to task over their web sites. I’m going to add these suckers to my Bad Architects Sites.

Here are some more articles about bad architectural web sites: bd and the Guardian.

I just got up from a cough-syrup-induced coma (I’ve got bronchitis) and realized that today marks the beginning of the 13th year of WPTS.

I’m reminded of what some famous musician (Roger McGuinn of the Byrds?) said: “Make sure you like the songs you record because you might have to sing them every night for the next 40 years.”

Back in 1996 I thought this site would be up for a couple of weeks since it was an adjunct to my HTML class. I wanted to show bad web design examples and I wanted to come up with an edgy domain name. The rest is history.

In the beginning I received a lot of complaints about the site’s name. Thanks to Bill Clinton, Beavis and Butt-Head, and American culture, I can’t remember the last time anyone found the name objectionable.

It’s been an interesting ride. Thanks.

I entered the following into Amazon’s search box: How Can I Talk If My Lips Won’t Move. Amazon said:

Your search “How Can I Talk If My Lips Won’t Move: ” did not match any products.

The only mistake I made consisted of one letter — Don’t instead of Won’t. I’m sorry, but that’s just unacceptable. I tried the same search at Barnes & Noble and Powell’s, but they couldn’t find the book. Oh, Borders gets it right. Why did I search for the title? I couldn’t remember the author’s name: Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay.

BTW, it’s a great book about what it’s like to be autistic.

Submitter comments: Flash-based site, Wait-For-It homepage intro, Mystery Meat (birds count as meat, right?), annoying sound effects, contrast issues, pop-
up windows (in the “press” section”. Did I miss anything?

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Not a whole lot. The lack of contrast is what drives me crazy. On the other hand there’s some “good” news on the Flash front. Here’s another e-mail I received:

I am a regular visitor to your site and just came across an article you might be interested in: Once Nearly Invisible To Search Engines, Flash Files Can Now Be Found And Indexed.

Of course I’m sure this will do nothing to stop the wide spread suckiness of web design in general, but it’s a step forward at least.

You’re right, of course. The key part of the article is:

Becoming visible is one thing, actually ranking highly is another. Google currently can find about 73 million Flash files on the Web. But until Adobe makes it easy for the average Webmaster or blogger to link deeply into those Flash files, they are not likely to appear at the top of many search results.

You just know that spammers are out there trying to figure out how they can game the system. It will be easier to game because it will be harder to figure out if someone is spamming because all the evil is hiding inside of a Flash file. You won’t be able to look at a Flash page and figure out what’s going on in the same way you can look at an HTML file.

Thomas Paul