The Daily Sucker

Submitter comments: On the internet, Antigua: The Land of Fairies Wizards and Heroes is something of an infamously bad book. I suppose it’s not surprising it has a bad web site, but it is terrible. Really, what are those bouncing things? Make them stop!

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I wish I could make them stop. I really do.

We’ve got images used as text, horizontal scrolling, ugly colors, and a link to the home page on the home page.

Antigua: Volume 1

Submitter comments: OK, I actually hesitated to submit this site because I am an aspiring banjo player and have actually purchased instructional materials from this site. Although the content of the materials is top notch, the web site, well, just plain sucks.

Navigation is a mess with redundant links all over the place. You feel like you’re always lost. Not to mention the clutter, the image links, the colors, the animated gifs, the centered text… The list could go on and on!

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Possibly true, but I think your list is a great start. The Flash logo is hard to read and it’s a stupid implementation of Flash. I’m not sure why they have a Splash Page that resembles the “real” home page.

I’m going to trust the submitter’s comments that the instructional materials are top notch. I’m not a musician, so I can’t tell, but it upsets me that high quality material is presented like some cheap pr()n site from 1996.

BanjoTeacher.com

Submitter comments: None.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I went to the The Hard Rock Memorabilia page because Microsoft said its Silverlight 2 software had an exciting feature called DeepZoom:

This capability allows users to explore collections of super high resolution imagery, from a 2 or 3 megapixel shot from a digital camera to gigapixel scans of museum pieces, all without waiting for huge file downloads.  The simple zooming interface allows users to explore entire collections down to specific details in extreme close-up, all with fantastic performance and smooth transitions.

OK. I go to the Hard Rock page and I’m greeted with the following message (I’m just showing the important part of the page) on the last line:

I’m not using a Mac and the Hard Rock should be smart enough to know this.

Oh. I mistakenly thought that all the Mystery Meat on the page belonged to the feature artists named on the left side. Wrong. Unfortunately, there’s no way to find out if your favorite artist is featured. That’s what really sucks.

The Hard Rock Memorabilia page (Requires Microsoft Silverlight)

Submitter comments: This web page sucks in the classic form of sucking. No overuse of Javascript, no using Flash where plain HTML would do. It’s just downright bad.

It has a bright blue background with red, white, blue, and black text. Note that some of that black text has a yellow background. This web page overuses contrast, except for the blue text (that you can find if you look really hard) randomly thrown in with text.

To make sure you don’t lust over an image of a box of yodels, they’ve gone ahead and disabled right click for you. The funny thing is that the script to disable right click doesn’t even work (when you use Firefox). The right click menu shows up after you press “OK.”

Vincent Flanders’ comments: This charmer uses 370 <FONT> tags. Yes, 370! The page has more <META> tags than almost any other site I’ve seen, but they don’t have a DOCTYPE. This is crazy. Oh, the page goes on forever.

Drakes Cakes

Submitter comments: Here’s another sucker from Down Under. We build ‘em good down here!

Vincent Flanders’ comments: You sure do build them good. Unfortunately, this site isn’t one of them <grin>. It’s nice to see some old-style mistakes like “Welcome to” and “Please Change Your Screen Resolution.” The tacky backgrounds are a nice touch, as are the frames.

Weatherfoil Pty Ltd

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