The Daily Sucker

Submitter comments: I was looking at high-end houses in an area where I’m thinking of moving and my agent sent me this URL. Talk about Mystery Meat Navigation. Until about the fifth house I didn’t realize there was a Panorama Tour or a Full Screen mode. Oh, and there’s hidden navigation at the top.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Ironically, if you go to their regular home page, you don’t have these problems. Life would be so much easier if they just put a text menu on the left-side.

Obeo high-end tour (Choose High)

Submitter comments: This is for an actual airport parking company in Toronto. Possibly the ugliest site ever, this gem actually made my eyes bleed. It’s so confusing I don’t even know what services it’s offering anymore. There’s two navigation panels linking to subpages that each have a different templates.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Another example of “Where’s the Focus?” I dunno. It’s time to scrap the site and start all over.

Skyway Park

Submitter comments: I was searching for a continuing education class to take and found this scary site of of Georgia Perimeter College. As a person who has been designing web sites for a while now, the yellow links for the course listings were not only hard to read but also made me wince. I think a small piece of my creativity died inside.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: If I had a dollar for every time I’ve said CONTRAST, I’d be a rich man. Doesn’t anybody in charge of the web site ever look at the end result? Of course, you just know they’ll fix it after finding out they made WPTS so I also have a screenshot

Georgia Perimeter College

Screenshot (in case they change it)

Submitter comments: Try this one on for size.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Ouch, it’s too gaudy and way too long. Can we put any more on a web page? I especially love the subpages like What to Bring with its gaudy, unmoving background image. It’s a car wreck.

Sail New York City

Submitter comments: Vincent, I come to you today feeling incredibly guilty.  I’ve been a fan and patron of Poor David’s Pub, an exemplary live music venue in Dallas, Texas, for years.  Poor David’s has been a great place to catch local and touring bands for as long as I can remember, and I hate myself for speaking ill of the place.  However, I hadn’t had any reason to visit the pub’s Web site, and as you can tell, it’s straight out of 1997.  Animated musical notes, black background, and a page that scrolls on forever, and those are the least of its problems.

Now, I agree with you that most artistic sites should be exempt from winning a Daily Sucker.  However, when it’s a site for a business that promotes or displays artistry, wouldn’t it be better if the business was making sure that it wasn’t blinding its patrons with bad Web design?

Vincent Flanders’ comments: A lot of pubs still have this 1997 look and I don’t understand why. My favorite section on today’s Daily Sucker is Upcoming Shows, which features a set of animated, rainbow divider bars so out there that even gay bars won’t use them on their web sites. The same goes for the multicolored text.

I personally hate calendars that aren’t up-to-date and this site’s is certainly not current. I’ve noticed a lot of rock bands actually keep their calendars up-to-date (the Gin Blossoms come to mind).

Poor David’s Pub

Submitter comments: This is not the worst I’ve ever seen, but it’s really annoying. Plus, he thinks everyone that flies a kite should like the same kind of kite flying that he does. He has a grudge, and it’s ugly to read about. The front page isn’t the worst, again, but when you start drilling down, you quickly get into a rabbit hole of navigation.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Kites have been on my mind. I’ve been planning to go to the Washington State International Kite Festival over at Long Beach, but the weather has just sucked the last two days. Maybe today I’ll get to go.

I think the homepage makes every text error except using sideways text. We’ve got small text, multicolored text, centered and flush-left text, and it uses hidden text. There’s a large gap at the bottom of the home page. Click and drag your mouse and you’ll eventually see a screed about the “kite culture.” Who cares?

I’m in the minority about putting dates on web pages; however, if you go to the bottom of the Catalog/Store page, you’ll see the note “This page current as of Jul-6-2006.”

Seattle AirGear

Submitter comments: My friend, GlobeGuy, sent me two e-mails:

1. I haven’t sent you a with a terrible globe in a while.
2. Once again I find myself researching websites, and you know what that means. Here’s another site with not one but two ridiculous globes

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I can always count on GlobeGuy to come through.

I have to admit that the first site’s Flash globe is pretty and, as a former marketing weasel, I like it because it’s shiny. As an ADHD-boy, I like it because it causes me to lose focus of why I came to the site. Hmm. Why did I come to this site? Look at the nice puppy.

I think the second site has three globes (there’s a small one at the end of the top nav bar).

The only bigger cliche than a globe is a spider’s web. Thank God (or “Dog” if you’re dyslexic) you don’t see spider webs on anything but sites about spiders.

Avistar Communications (the first site)

SDL Tridon (the second site)