#3 Worst Non-Profit Web Site of 2007 — University of Wisconsin-Madison Visual Culture

Submitter's comments: I'm afraid I must report the Visual Culture program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for its egregious Mystery Meat Navigation.

Sure, they're dealing with visual culture, obviously, but it's also housed at a university, so IMO they have an obligation to make the page clear and accessible.

Vincent Flanders' comments: When are designers going to learn how to bypass the Eolas patent plugin problem? Heck, Dreamweaver 8.0 practically forces the solution down your throat. We also have some color issues with internal pages.

Other comments #1: The MMN is bad enough by itself. What's worse is, it's Flash-based. This, IMHO, is WORSE than the MMN-laden site for Brown University's graduate school from a couple years back. At least they didn't use Flash, and seeing as how they made the top 10 list for suckiest pages of 2005, I think these guys should be in 2007's top 10 suckiest list.

Other comments #2: What frightens me the most is the fact that an entire generation of web designers is being led to believe this kind of bad web design is actually good and proper! Who or what is behind this culture of such extraordinary ignorance?

Other comments #3: I just love the HTML pages - the four boxes at the bottom. Each page's title is "title" and the Opportunities page body copy is simply the word "body." If you don't have copy for a page, don't put it up. Why didn't they just slap an "under construction" animated gif while they were at it for pete's sake?

As for the Flash, why I have nothing better to do than sit and wait for some stupid animation to finish EVERY TIME I click a link! What were they thinking?

Visual Culture