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

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

Have you ever wondered, “Did Bob read my e-mail that had my quote or is he just ignoring me?” Well, if Bob uses HTML e-mail (and lots of folks do) you can find out if he opened your e-mail.

About.com has an article entitled “Windows Email Return Receipt Tools and Services” and it mentions a good number of services and software. The one I bought and use is from a company called MSGTAG. (While MSGTAG has an affiliate program, I’m not a member.)

There are 3 versions (one if free, but your e-mail has a footer about MSGTAG) I bought the high-end product MSGTAG Status 2 ($59.95) and it’s really amazing. For example, I discovered that my daughter — the person I love more than anyone in the universe — waited 3 weeks and 23 hours to open one of my e-mails.

On the other hand, it only took Seth Godin 2 minutes and 12 seconds to open an e-mail I sent him entitled “Bad Marketing at the American Diabetes Association.” Hmm. I think there’s a point here.

I was really disappointed when a program called RescueTime stopped working. I tried everything suggested and I couldn’t get it back. Well, the great news is IT WORKS AGAIN. The solution was one of the following:

1. There was a new version of the software.
2. I updated Windows and the .NET 2.0 upgrade decided to finally install (third time’s the charm).
3. I created a new user account.

I really like the way it tells me how much time I’m spending on each application on my computer. It’s very cool and the individual version is free (the business version hasn’t been release so I don’t know pricing.) I have no commercial interest in this product. I’m just happy it’s working again.

On the other hand, WebLog Expert has gone down the tubes. Sigh.

It’s pretty simple. We have 3 candidates and 3 web sites. For Clinton and Obama, you have to skip the splash page. McCain doesn’t have a splash page because he’s won the nomination and doesn’t need to sign people up.

I made my decision on:

• Initial appearance.
• Contrast between text and background using AccessColor.
• HTML validation using The W3C Validation Service.
• CSS validation using The W3C Validation Service.
• Page size and Speed Report using The Web Page Analyzer.

Here are the results of the tests.

Here are the web sites:

Hillary Clinton
John McCain
Barack Obama

Here’s Your Chance to Vote for the Suckiest Presidential Web Site and the Best Looking Presidential Web Site

Once you vote, you’ll see how Vincent voted. Political beliefs do not count (I don’t like any politician).

The Suckiest Presidential Candidate Web Site

The Best Looking Presidential Candidate Web Site