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

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Since Sunday is the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I want to present three different 9/11-themed web mistakes. One is accidental; one is interpretational; and the last one is an example of horrific bad taste.

1. The Accidental Mistake.

One of TheStreet.com’s many different home pages from 9-11 needed a sharper editorial eye.

2. The Interpretational Mistake.

Massport left up graphics showing an airplane in the crosshairs of who knows what. Since Massport runs Logan Airport, where two of the three passenger jets were hijacked, they should have removed the graphics immediately.

3. The Horrific Bad Taste Mistake

Some days after 9/11 a company said, “You know, I think we can use 9/11 to sell online wills.”

Here is a video of the world’s worst banner ad and it still leaves me gasping for air.

Submitter’s comments: Subtitled “Where valuable information is dumped on you without charge 24/7.” This site has a lot to dump on the visitor.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Dump is the operative word. Don’t click on anything. I clicked on “Click Here” and a PowerPoint presentation immediately downloaded itself. Of course, there’s no warning..

Supervideo

Submitter’s comments: It’s bad enough dealing with the US Post Office’s 20-digit tracking numbers, but they figured out a way to make online tracking even MORE complicated.

Type in your tracking number, which looks like this:

0310 3490 0001 0692 1429

and the form removes the spaces as you type, making it much more difficult to proofread the number.

Good design would strip the spaces AFTER the number gets submitted, so the user deals only with the more user-friendly version of the number. Duh. Appalling to think that millions of people get to deal with this lousy interface. :(

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Well, it’s entirely possible we won’t have the Postal Service to kick around for much longer. You can copy the above numbers or copy some of the example numbers on the page and paste them into the form. It scrunches them together and the small font makes them difficult to read. Oh, well.

U.S. Postal Service Track and Confirm

Submitter’s comments: This is a terrible play on legal websites!

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I think “play” is the operative word here. When I first went to the site, my first reaction was, “Holy stuff! This can’t be real.” Then I remembered, “Hey, this is the Internet. It’s full of crappy, stupid web design. Of course, it could be real.” I poked around and I found a link that referred to the TV series Breaking Bad. I think this site was an attempt to get some PR for the show.

You have to love the site. You want to believe it’s real because it’s so believably bad.

Better Call Saul

Vincent Flanders’ comments: I clicked an article link on Hacker News and it took me to a site called Good Stuff. Wrong. Bad stuff. Very bad stuff. I couldn’t read the freaking text. I’ve called #666 Satan’s CSS, but this guy uses #777—which is an order of magnitude worse. AccessColor failed their site and here’s the screenshot.

The guy calls himself a geek. Wrong, again. He’s an ArtFart. ArtFarts are the opposite of designers. They waste your time by being pretentious, obtuse and other pretentious words. Real web designers understand the term contrast and use it in their work. A new website has taken up my cause about contrast and it’s called, logically enough, Contrast Rebellion. Since ArtFarts think graphically, maybe if they look at Contrast Rebellion they’ll understand the importance of contrast and change their ways.

If you’re going to write, let me read your text.

Good Stuff