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

Everson Museum of Art

Submitter’s comments: As always, you are the best. LOVE the new giant image blast at the top of your site! Here’s my latest nomination. I’m stuck in existential hell!! :)

Sure, the Everson Museum is SO pretty, with the requisite Flash that right-brainers get so excited about. The sucking part is very simple — No Menu Visible unless you happen to mouse over the top of the screen, giving you Mystery Meat Navigation. Grade: F+. You can almost hear them saying:

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Like I’ve recently said:

Of course, with artsy sites we’re bound to have contrast issues. I checked out the contrast of the home page using AccessColor, and I received the following report:

The W3C recommends a standard of 500 or greater for the color difference and a standard of 125 or greater for color brightness.

Based on these considerations, the results for this page are:

1. Both color difference and color brightness do not meet the recommended standard for 0% of the total text.
2. Either color difference or color brightness does not meet the recommended standard for 20.74% of the total the text. A Warning message is displayed next to the HTML source line.

Text on background with images is for 51.63% of the total text.

Yes, I know it’s an art site, but hiding the navigation for a museum is inexcusable.

Everson Museum of Art