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

As profiled in TechCrunch, Songkick “provides people with a centralized way of keeping track of live performances by their favorite bands and artists.” Pick a band to follow and you’ll get suggestions of other artists to follow. That’s fine except when they suggest artists who have been dead for nearly 20 years. C’mon guys.

Songkick

I’m tired of reading articles about “Websites That Will Inspire You” that feature sites that don’t follow web standards for contrast. These standards are for the visually impaired, but you don’t have to be blind to not be able to read the content on many websites.

As AccessKeys points out:

“The W3C recommends a standard of 500 or greater for the color difference and a standard of 125 or greater for color brightness.” These recommendations are in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.

Some designers act that these standards are only important if you want to have an accessible website. If we were only concerned about accessibility, we could just say, “Screw ’em, they’re blind” and go on the way we’ve been going for years. Unfortunately, people who aren’t blind or vision impaired have difficulty reading these pages.

I’m not asking much, I just want to read your text and see what you have to say is of interest. If I can’t read it, I will leave it. So will anyone with a brain in their head.

Since I don’t critique web design firms as it would appear to be a conflict of interest (even though I don’t offer design services), I won’t point out which websites suck in the following article. Fortunately, the article is not just limited to design firms.

My readers are smart. You’ll be able to figure out which websites suck.

Stop Promoting Websites That Don’t Follow Web Standards And Are Hard To Read

Submitter’s comments: I was actually looking for a friend of mine who operates under the same name. I was just about to drive round and smack him upside the head, but it turns out this isn’t his page.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I’m sure he can’t change the name “BJ The Clown,” but I think I would. As this screen shot demonstrates, the home page is amazing—especially when you have your monitor in portrait mode. I don’t think this tiling is acceptable. The use of frames has its drawbacks. On the home page, there’s a link to the home page. This is always a bad idea, but it’s especially bad when you use frames. As this screen shot illustrates, it loads the home page over itself.

BJ is from Portland, Oregon, a city much beloved by yours truly. One of the funniest new shows on cable is Portlandia, a “dreamy and absurd rendering of Portland, Oregon. ”

BJ The Clown

Submitter’s comments: This site features “instant on” music, Flash animation out the wazoo, scroll screens galore and a horrible “ping” noise every time you mouse over one of the items on the page.  Truly a sucker.  Enjoy!

Vincent Flanders’ comments: It’s truly a sucker. Let’s not forget the contrast problems. Generally, people want to see your links. It always amazes me that people think they have the legal right to put music files on their web sites. I guess they didn’t read Why You Can’t Use Music On Your Web Site.

Red Carpet Theater Productions

No special URL. Just go to any page at The Daily Sucker on your phone ( iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Palm OS and Samsung) or your iPad.

It’s a bit slow. I had to disable cache, etc.