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

ABBC Breeders

Submitter’s comments: Hey, thanks for the great site. I’ve been having fun going through it this evening. It’s kind of like a walk down nostalgia lane. Especially so, this one site that seems to have been updated since you reported on it.

For the January – March of ’09 worst sites, there’s an entry for ABBC Breeders. In the included screenshot of the post it looks like they had some sort of Arbor Day design up? Well, as Christmas draws near… ah. Words cannot describe. I really feel like I’ve been transported back in time.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Gee. My version of the site is for St. Patrick’s Day. (The screenshot is 1.5Mb and leaves out most of the detail because the full-size version was 11Mb).

I can’t believe I didn’t include this site in Vote for the Worst Web Design Of 2009 (Group 1). The current, Christmas version is amazing. I’m hypnotized.

ABBC Breeders

l.a. Eyeworks

Submitter’s comments: The web site is incredibly stale, outdated and just plain horrible.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: For just plain horrible, you need to see and Vote for the Worst Web Design Of 2009 (Group 1). You’ll get an education in horrible.

The splash home page is trendy, but it’s an ugly, sloppy trendy look. I wasn’t sure where to click, so I clicked on the guy’s face and was taken to a page promoting one of their frames called Kowalski. The page’s green background with red banner did not help enhance the look of the blue and red eye frames. Speaking of the frames, as an overweight, boring, pale white guy I need all the color I can get; however, even I think these frames are excessive. Hell, even Elton John doesn’t wear them.

I went back to the home page to poke around and discovered that the “real home page” link was the swirling circles. Yeah, everybody’s going to understand that.

The sorriest feature of the site is the site’s “find the l.a. Eyeworks provider nearest you” link. It opens up your email program but, of course, it doesn’t inform you that it’s going to open Outlook (in my case). If you can’t provide dealers based on my zip code, let me fill out an email form. Don’t open my email program.

l.a. Eyeworks

The Holiday Light Store

Submitter’s comments: This is Google’s top result for the words "Christmas light store" and I can’t even get the store page to load. It’s the sort of site I can understand being a *little* tacky, and yet I still think it goes overboard.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Electricity just got back on after two days of going without. Oh, the joys of living in paradise.

Overboard? No, today’s Sucker goes overboard and sinks rapidly to the bottom of the ocean. My biggest gripe? There’s a whole section of text you can’t read because there’s no contrast. My second biggest gripe? Everything else.

There really isn’t any navigation as navigation is defined. It took a while to find the store link, which goes to a page that eats up 1.3Mb of bandwidth.

On the other hand, the animated GIFs are perfectly acceptable because they demonstrate the different products.

The Holiday Light Store

Dow Solar Solution

Submitter’s comments: There are so many things wrong with the Dow Solar Solution site:

1. White text on yellow background in the menu.
2. The menu is cut off (it actually says “Talk to Us“).
3. The graphics. Sweet Mother of God, the graphics. Pay particular attention to the house-thing on Dow’s Commitment to Solar page.
4. The typos.
5. If you disable JavaScript, the background disappears.

I can’t look at it longer. I’m sure you could find more.

The worst part? This site is getting more and more exposure as Dow receives awards relating to solar energy.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Contrast, dammit. The menu is just plain evil.

The Commitment to Solar page has typos and grammar issues. Since they’ll fix the mistakes, this screenshot is proof. The home page also has 2 BODY tags.

Oh, I clicked on the bottom link labeled Accessibility Statement. I hate to break the news to you, we’ve got very serious contrast issues on the accessibility page. Oh, the irony.

Disclaimer: Back in 1970 I worked for Dow Chemical in Zionsville, Indiana, cutting up, grinding up and extracting the blood from tens of thousands of human placentas. Here’s a little-known fact: when human placentas rot, they smell just like chicken, which explains why I couldn’t eat chicken for 15 years.

Dow Solar Solution

Eat a Chiquita

Submitter’s comments: It’s basically an ad for Chiquita bananas. The whole site is done in Flash, including the intro, which is nice looking but puts too much strain even on my fairly powerful system to run without stopping every few seconds.

The site also has a horrible case of Mystery Meat Navigation and you need to scroll horizontally (by moving toward the side of the screen) to see the whole thing. Then there’s the constantly playing background music and the shop link that opens a different site in a new window without warning you (presumably so that the Flash abomination can keep running in the background)

Vincent Flanders’ comments: God, these sites are such a waste of time. I hate ‘em because they serve no purpose other than to employ Flash developers which, actually, is a good thing.

Eat a Chiquita

Phonetics

Submitter’s comments: I would like to nominate the following as a web site. that sucks: Phonetics. This site pleasingly combines over-wraught Flash, mystery-meat navigation and weird layout with a complete lack of content. It’s

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I love the phrase “pleasingly combines over-wraught Flash.” God, the British are so damn polite.

I sat there and viewed the intro three times because I thought there had to be more to justify using Flash. I should know better. Depending on your window size, the text slams into the boxes. Of course, everyone knows the eye icon stands for “offers” and the lightning bolt icons is the universal symbol for “providers.” I get the feeling there’s not much information for the web site, so they’re using the Flash and the Mystery Meat to make the site look complex.

Phonetics

Prescription Pill and Drug Disposal Program Network

Submitter’s comments: My eyes don’t want to look at this web site. I was trying to get some information on disposing of prescription drugs, but this site is hard to read. I especially don’t like the red text on blue background.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: My eyes don’t want to look at it either. Heck, AccessColor didn’t seem too thrilled either. Here’s what their report said:

Both color difference and color brightness do not meet the recommended standard for 20.49% of the total text.

Either color difference or color brightness does not meet the recommended standard for 79.51% of the total the text.

Hey! They’re perfect!

The page also doesn’t fit my 1200 pixel-wide screen. You have to horizontally scroll.

Prescription Pill and Drug Disposal Program Network

WMGH

Submitter’s comments: This radio station web site is definitely a contender for worst web site of 2009. I really don’t even know how to explain its awfulness. The list would be longer than the home page!

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Yeah, we have a contender and another example for my list of Over-The-Top web sites. The only thing that can fix this site is a squadron of F4′s and napalm.

Just on the one-in-a-trillion chance they fix the site, here’s a 4.3Mb partial screen capture. I say “partial” because SnagIt, my favorite screen capture program, can’t seem to capture this page and that’s pissing me off. With all the crap that’s on the Internet, SnagIt needs to capture bigger images.

WMGH

Pasupat Textiles

Submitter’s comments: Would you care for some motion sickness while shopping for textiles? This is the place.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: There’s very little except for the tours that wouldn’t be done better with HTML than Flash. At first I thought the site had moving rolls of toilet paper on the Splash page, but it was combed and carded yarn. Oh, we don’t need the Splash page either.

I may be one of the few gringos to realize that orange and green are colors used in India’s flag, but I’m sure I’m not one of the few to realize this color combination makes for a sucky looking web site. This company follows the rigorous ISO protocols, I just wished they were a little more rigorous in their site’s design.

Pasupat Textiles

The Spencer Davis Group

Submitter’s comments: Don’t go looking for any old CD’s by the Spencer Davis Group at Spencer Davis’s site, ok?

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Somebody didn’t proof their work. Of course, if the text were larger, maybe they could have found their mistake. The page in question is accessible from the home page link “Store.” Somebody forgot to put the finishing touches on the page. At the top is the following description:

Put some information here that will highlight the store and all the great things that an be purchased in the store.  Put some information here that will highlight the store and all the great things that an be purchased in the store.  Put some information here that will highlight the store and all the great things that an be purchased in the store.  Put some information here that will highlight the store and all the great things that an be purchased in the store.

Just in case they fix the page, I grabbed a screen capture.

The Spencer Davis Group

Manic Sanitation

Submitter’s comments: Go to this site and make sure to check every page and see how it has a lot of variation in the grid and in the look. If you can understand a little bit of the French text, their slogans are funny.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: First, you have to love the company’s name — “Manic Sanitation.” It conjures up all sorts of images. The color scheme is interesting. I’m not sure if it’s a “French thing,” but it’s hopefully not an American thing.

The Techniques page is certainly different. Normally, when I say “Flash” it’s about how a site has gone off the deep end with Flash — like Jim Carrey’s site, which is expensive and over-blown. Manic’s “Techniques” page may very well be the web’s cheapest and most under-blown use of Flash. Under-blown?

Manic performs disaster recovery services —and that reminds me of one of my favorite web sites from the last century — Scene Clean.

Manic Sanitation

Vivus

Submitter’s comments: I was researching about a medical issue that a very close and dear friend has when I clicked on a link that took me to a pharmaceutical company. I remembered that your biggest peeve is lack of contrast between the text and the background. Well, not only does this page (and site) have a lack of contrast in the text, but when you mouse over the menu items you get text that’s almost impossible to read.

I ran the page through AccessColor and it turns out that 87.46% of either the color difference or color brightness does not meet the W3C recommended standard. Oh, and to top it off, they’re using what you call “Satan’s CSS” — #666.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I can hear trophy wives throughout America saying, “Just what we need. Another ED drug.” Yes, you’re right, the contrast sucks is poor. Yes, it is my biggest complaint.

Vivus

I’d say that 99.92% of all animated GIFs should not be used on a web site. However; there are the .08% that are acceptable, but they’re hard to find. Of course they are. Here’s an animated GIF whose use actually makes sense.

The Rapture Fall 2009?

Submitter’s comments: This is an unintentionally hilarious site because… first of all, the guy must have some incredibly convoluted arithmetic. If the Rapture happens in the Fall of 2009, one would naturally think the ending of the 7-year tribulation period will be at the end of 2016, not 2015 as the site says.

Second, because he keeps changing his mind about the date. PZ Myers over at Pharyngula has lampooned this page at least twice because the predicted Rapture date keeps changing — always to a date just a few weeks in the future. (On the plus side, this DOES force the site owner to keep the site up to date!)

And third, well, this is just such a great example of the Over-The-Top school of web design. Animated horizontal dividers (the one at the top is positively twitchy). Ghastly color scheme (aqua, red, yellow, blue, and…pink?) Type styles, colors,and background changes. (What is it about all the red, yellow and blue lettering on sites like this?) Video links up the wazoo. (To his credit, they don’t all automatically load and start playing when you hit the page.) The mushroom cloud is just the finishing touch.

I particularly liked the quote: “Global food supply is near the breaking point and out the lowest level in 30 years! The world demand for food now out strips what the farmers can grow! To make matters worse, the Honeybees are dying off![1]”

Best of all, any problems with the web site are clearly and demonstrably *NOT HIS FAULT.* Proof? This testimonial: “First, I want to say how much I have valued your web site during this past year! With so many web sites out there who do not believe in a pre-tribulation rapture, your site is like a cool oasis in a dry desert!…You can always tell if a site is effective if the enemy tries to squash the effectiveness of the work. In other words, if souls are being saved, and people are being drawn closer to the Lord, Satan tries to nullify the effectiveness.”

[1] This is, of course, not actually funny, because it’s true that agriculture depends a lot on honeybees. But the phrasing makes it sound like the ULTIMATE catastrophe….

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Speaking of timing (and timing is everything), I just updated the Over-the-top Web Sites page. I most certainly will have to add this page and, I suspect, we have another contender for Worst Sites of 2009. In fact, we have so many OTT web sites, I might have to give them their own category.

My favorite quote has to be “You can always tell if a site is effective if the enemy tries to squash the effectiveness of the work.” Using the same wonderful “logic,” I guess this must mean that Amazon.com, Microsoft.com, macys.com, pbs.org, and 85% of the web aren’t effective because “the enemy” isn’t trying to squash these sites.

It’s 3.6Mb of downloadable crap. I tried for an hour to try to re-create this masterpiece so I could have a WPTS Rapture page and I couldn’t! I couldn’t figure out how to get CSS to limit the background color to just the text.

The Rapture Fall 2009?

The previous Daily Sucker reminded me how much I hate politics.

I hate politics so much that I don’t keep up on what’s going on; however, I was surprised to see an African-American woman at the top of the Republican National Committee (RNC) home page (they rotate the images, so your mileage will vary). I was under the impression — obviously a wrong impression — that there weren’t many African Americans in the party. I figured that the RNC would use more than one image and so I decided to see how many different images they used.

I decided to hit the page refresh button until I got an image that repeated. I saw nine unique images and since I’m assuming that these images are representative of the Republican Party, the makeup of the GOP is 33% African-American men, 22% African-American women, 33% young white women, and 11% chubby white men.

George Hutchins for U.S. Congress

Submitter’s comments: This site left an imprint on my retinas before I could close the browser. I’m scarred for life.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Wow! This site belongs to my favorite category: Over-The-Top Web Sites. I’m going to steal from one of my contributors when I say, This site is so bad, it simply cannot be “fixed,” that is, without the aid of a flight of F-4′s armed with napalm. Here is today’s sucker in the process of being fixed.

This is a political version of other loon sites like Havenworks, Yvette’s, Bella De Soto, MIAUK (Warning! Possible Seizures), etc.

Through all the mess on the site I discovered Hutchins is a Republican. I figured Hutchins had never seen the RNC web site and I was right. It’s much better than his site, but all that red on the RNC home page scared the bejesus out of me.

George Hutchins for U.S. Congress

I’m still pretty messed up from being in the hospital, but I thought I’d give you an advance look at the 20 Worst Sites from July through October. I’ve been working on them for quite a while and they’re ready to go except that I have to add them to the navigation, throw in some ads, and there are some other minor tweaks. Devoted Daily Sucker fans get first look. Comments are always welcome.

Many thanks to those who submitted sites and for all the wonderful commentary. I can’t do it without you.

Worst Web Sites of 2009: July – October #1-10

Worst Web Sites of 2009: July – October #11-20

Your understanding of architects (Architecture — An Industry With Sucky Web Sites) is way off, which is understandable as most everyone views architects incorrectly. Sadly, us structural engineers do nothing to change that perception. Well, some of us do, but few.

“I don’t know what the deal is with architects. For an industry that depends on accuracy and stability, they seem wildly inaccurate and unstable.”

Architects don’t have much to do with accuracy and nothing to do with stability. It’s the structural engineers who provide this for them. It’s no surprise that when they attempt to provide this themselves, in say a web site, they fail miserably at it. They haven’t consulted with a structural engineer for this part of the project.

“They love, love, love, love Mystery Meat Navigation, which doesn’t make sense because they wouldn’t use this technique on their buildings.”

Yes they do love it. And, believe me they try to use it on “their” buildings. Structural engineers manage to squeeze out as much of this as they can before concrete and steel hit the site.

“When it comes to their web sites, architects seem to be one floor short of a complete building. They all need to be redesigned.”

Their buildings wouldn’t be much of a building without structural engineers as well.

I enjoyed the architect bashing. ;-)