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

Submitter’s comments: With most websites on WPTS at least I have some idea of what the site is about. But I have absolutely no idea what’s going on here. It’s not even Mystery Meat Navigation, since there’s no meat and no navigation!

The mystery doesn’t end on this page. If you click on the small link at the bottom of the page (called “V2”), it takes you to another mysterious page. Clicking on 02 opens another page, and here…well…judge for yourself.

All I can conclude is that in the wrong hands, Flash is a very dangerous tool.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: It’s a WTF Website. As in “What the Heck am I doing at this Website.” I sure hope it isn’t a portfolio website. If it’s an art website, it fails because there’s no way to tell it’s an art website. Heck, it’s a massive fail because I can’t tell what kind of a website it is.

Reforms.net

Submitter’s comments: I am shocked, shocked to find web site suck here: moving banner with flashing and blinking links, animated gifs, multicolored “new” signs, and longish front page in need of organization and a navigation scheme.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I’m confused. I thought electric cars are the future. If they’re the future, the website should be “futuristic”—whatever the heck that means. It certainly isn’t a flat, responsive website. It’s about as sucky as it gets. OK. OK. It’s nowhere near as bad as any of the sites listed in Worst Websites of 2012: Beyond The Pale. I was just trying to make a point.

Personally, I’m absolutely stunned by the logo. Oh, heck. I’m absolutely stunned by the whole site.

Electrifying Times

Submitter’s comments: The homepage is probably the worst, but there’s much more sucky stuff inside.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Normally, I don’t look at source code because it’s often a very scary place to visit. However, the source code for this home page looks fine and the CSS file has lots of comments and there doesn’t seem to be anything unusual.

What we have here is mixed text colors and sizes and an image that goes over the borders of the page (DARE—Dictionary of Regional English). You can see what I’m talking about by viewing a screen capture (1Mb).

One outstanding feature on the home page is they let you know you’re going to download a Word Document or a PDF. That’s rare.

Consistency is key here. The key is broken.

National Museum of Language

Submitter’s comments: Same old, same old. Mystery Meat Navigation (MMN) just never dies, does it? My wife was looking for a phone number to call. She never did find it. I found it after about 5 minutes (which IMHO is about 4:59 too long.) Another case of “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Flash is “deader” than Steve Jobs (who put a few bullet holes in Flash to help kill it), but architects still seem to love it. We have the usual small text that’s hard to read and symbols at the top right that are difficult to read and even more difficult to decipher their meaning (except for “contact us” and “home”).

It looks like there’s MMN on the home page, but the navigation matches up with the pictures. Unfortunately, the MMN shows up when you click one of the pictures. Try clicking “Process” and you’ll see what I mean.

FGM Architects

Submitter’s comments: I found this true gem, which works fine when Flash is blocked -looks like the no-flash section is not as bad, but unfortunately you do not get to choose: If flash is working, you get the flash version. there is not even a link to the non-flash site, although it would not have been a big deal.

The website otherwise not only seems to be completely Flash-based, but also features a huge intro video (without any content), Mystery Meat Navigation (animated with flying items, no less) and, according to my tests, it does not work in Firefox, does not work in Opera and does not work in Safari. In these browsers you only get an image preloader, an then a not-changing more or less empty Flash site.

The only browser to show the whole animation site on my computer without errors was Google Chrome, but I suppose IE should do the trick.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: You’re right. It’s a gem of an example of bad web design because there is very little right with it. We have Flash Used Badly. Very. Badly. We also have Mystery Meat Navigation (MMN) in it’s worst form (OK, this page has the worst MMN).

Yes, there’s a link to a sitemap at the bottom of the home page. Guess what? It’s hard to read because there’s not enough contrast—the text color is #A7A9AC.

I’m guessing the submitter is using a Mac because the site is viewable—which doesn’t mean usable—on my Windows machine using Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, IE7 and IE10. The folks administering the site apparently don’t have a clue about DNS or redirection. If you leave off the “www” and just type enritec.com, you can’t get to the site—which may not be a bad thing.

Enritec