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

Submitter’s comments: Yet another architecture site that confuses and overwhelms.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: This site is so horrible that my mind feels like it was in a Cheech and Chong movie. Flash is dead. Mystery Meat Navigation is dead (or so I thought).

There are no redeeming features to this site unless you have terminal ADD.

DS+R

Submitter’s comments: “Astrobiology – Quantum Physics – Origins – Evolution – Metamorphosis – Extinction,” but not any design sense. Now we know where all the beveled edges and using tables for page layout went to die. I think this purports to be a science publication.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: The site has a great URL and a lousy looking website. I know my book covers were colorful and all, but these book covers are over-the-top-space-themed covers. I’ll give them credit for keeping most of the text left-justified. Left-justified is especially nice when reading the opus,  “The Evolution of Life From Other Planets.”  This stuff is way over/under my head (not sure which because I don’t plan to spend the time reading anything here.

Cosmology

Submitter’s comments: This is INEXCUSABLE for a website to do this, and there’s no way to opt out of this to view the site. And no, I didn’t enter my E-mail address. Just WHO signed off on this, anyway?

Vincent Flanders’ comments: This silly technique of requiring new visitors to register is a favorite of trendy, online retailers. Fab.com used to do it, but finally wised up. This technique annoys me no end because it adds an annoying extra step. Fortunately, there’s an easy solution: use a throwaway email address. The folks at Touch of Modern should have caught on to the fact that the email address I used to access the site—bob321@mailinator.com—is a throwaway address. Got me inside their site like a champ, though. Here’s a screenshot of what was inside when I visited.

If you’re faced with this kind of problem, here’s an article from 2012 that features a bunch of services to generate fake email addresses—I mean “disposable email providers”. Please note: some websites are wise to this technique and have blacklisted some/many/all of these services. Please only use these services for website registration or to send me suggestions for the Daily Sucker . BTW, don’t email me from your work address. Especially if you’re submitting your company’s website .

Touch of Modern

Submitter’s comments: This web page sucks.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Of course it sucks. I love this site because it belongs to an architectural / engineering company. We all know how much architectural websites suck.

This website is a classic. Scroll over the brown boxes and you’ll get the Carousel From Hell. Jakob Nielsen has an article about carousels that Mimarch should have read. Here are the details:

Designing Effective Carousels: Create a Fanciful Amusement, Not a House of Horrors

Carousels allow multiple pieces of content to occupy a single, coveted space. This may placate corporate infighting, but on large- or small-view ports, people often scroll past carousels. A static hero or integrating content in the UI may be better solutions. But if a carousel is your hero, good navigation and content can help make it effective

As I said earlier, in the world of carousels, Mimarch has the Carousel from Hell. In fact, it might even be seizure inducing.

The home page also has scrolling Mystery Meat Navigation, but clicking the graphics is a waste of time because nothing happens. Why? The home page has around 225 files and eats up 25Mb of bandwidth 25 megabytes!

The sub-pages have text that’s very difficult to read. I could go on but I’ve got to get up early and my tolerance for crappy web design can only take so much.

Mimarch

Submitter’s comments: Not only is the writer a (two pejorative modifiers and one pejorative noun deleted ), but the website uses frames and is borderline unusable on my laptop’s 1366×768 display. That and this website was made EARLIER THIS YEAR! What over-the-top crap.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: It’s nice to see that KidsToday appreciate the past. The 1996 past. I think this website makes more text-related mistakes than any I’ve seen recently. It’s definitely an Over-the-top Website.

There’s a section about “Text and Links” in my soon-to-be-revised article Checklist 1 – 65 Mortal Sins That Will Send Your Site to Web Design Hell. How many text mistakes does today’s sucker make?

• Our site mixes and matches text sizes on the page. (Video)
• Our site mixes text colors on the page. (Also see the video above.)
• Our site’s text requires people to have special (unusual) fonts on their computers to correctly view our text.
• Visitors can’t read our text because it’s too small or it’s difficult to read and comprehend because it’s too large.
• Leading (spacing) is too big / too small.
• There is not enough leading between paragraphs, menu links, and/or lists.
• Our SITE USES LOTS OF WORDS IN ALL-CAPS.
• Our site uses scrolling, blinking, fading, or moving text.
• We use multiple text styles on the same page for no logical reason. We mix and match (choose your combination) flush left, center, flush right and/or justified text.
• The color contrast analyzer (here’s a video showing the color contrast analyzer in action) says there isn’t enough contrast between text/links and background. Here’s a video that discusses contrast.
• There isn’t enough contrast between our page’s text and background.
• Our site uses centered text on more than just headlines.
• We use justified text. Why it’s bad #1 and why it’s bad #2.
• We use browser-specific text tags like <MARQUEE>.
• We use font faces that are not appropriate for our audience — like Comic Sans on a senior citizen site.
• Our site has text in the status bar — moving JavaScript text.
• We have too much / too little text on a page.
• We haven’t checked to see if Google Translate (somewhat) accurately translates our text to other languages.
• Our site uses underlined text. (Only links should be underlined.)
• Our site has sideways text/links.
• Visited links don’t change color.
• Our links are not clearly labeled. “Click here” is not enough (NSFW, perhaps)
• Our site has too many links in one area.
• Our site has too many links. (Video)
• Our site has lots of dead links.
• Our site has lots of dead links and/or no 404 pages.
• Our site has lots of complex URLs.
• Our site has links consisting of 10-20 words.
• Our links are not informative.

Bombshell 201X