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Yahoo! Developer Network — Websites that suck!

Posted by Vincent Flanders at 5:35 am

Yahoo! Developer Network

Submitter’s comments: None.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: These folks are so totally unfreaking clear on the concept that they really need to be slapped.

If I remember correctly, “Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site” was one of the first articles on the topic that normals could almost understand. What’s really disturbing about this long, long article is that they’re using #666 for the text color and we all know that #666 is Satan’s CSS.

With #666 there’s not enough contrast between the text and the white background to easily read the article. This is especially bad because the article is so long. Oh, and lack of contrast is a problem because the W3C recommends a standard of 500 or greater for the color difference and a standard of 125 or greater for color brightness and #666 doesn’t cut it.

As I said in the Daily Sucker for 9-9-9, “The harder it is to read a web page the easier it becomes for your visitors to hit the BACK button and go to a site they can read. In order to read a web page, you need enough contrast between the text color and the background color.

“This isn’t rocket science. I’ll even  give you a simple guide that shows which shades of black to use for text on a white background.”

This horrible text color is EXTREMELY popular because it’s what the CoolKid designers use. I know that KidsToday don’t read, but there are still lots of people who do and this article on speeding up your web site can’t be put into pretty pictures and putting some of the concepts into an 8-minute video isn’t terribly helpful. Here are a lot more performance-related videos. Right now, Google is one of the main sources for information on the topic. Gosh. Even though the text is small, you can read it. What a concept!

Yahoo! Developer Network

Post from: Web Pages That Suck — Daily Sucker

Yahoo! Developer Network — The Daily Sucker for Thursday, January 28, 2010

mxyplyzyk — Websites that SUCK!

Posted by Vincent Flanders at 3:16 am

mxyplyzyk

Submitter’s comments: I think it’s pronounced ’suck.’

Vincent Flanders’ comments: You’ve got Mystery Meat Navigation where the meat changes — fortunately, the links stay the same — and a needless use of Flash plus, for some reason, they’re using the https protocol. I don’t understand.

What really sucks is that you have itty-bitty little thumbnails of the products. The problem is that you’re not sure what they represent until you click them. On the “Kids and Pets” page I clicked on a picture of a dog. Turns out it’s a pillow. How is it possible for me to know that? You just wasted my time. Actually, the whole site is a giant waste of time.

mxyplyzyk

Post from: Web Pages That Suck — Daily Sucker

mxyplyzyk — The Daily Sucker for Tuesday, January 26, 2010

The Daily Sucker for 1/8/2010

Posted by Vincent Flanders at 7:04 am

RoadTrucker

Submitter’s comments: I found a sucker.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: Yes, you have and it pleases me no end when people show they understand what bad web design looks like. The obvious mistake — Where’s the Focus? There’s so much going on that I’m not sure a) where I should go b) what this company has that can solve my problems.

The menu on the left doesn’t help. The selections are:

Home
About Us
Free Games
Customer Feedback
Product Catalog
Search
Security Policy

Being a rational sort, I’m assuming these items are in the order the company thinks is important. I’m probably assuming incorrectly. The menu on the top is also confusing. It “appears” the blue menu items may be in order of importance, but “Products” is the last button. This doesn’t make sense.

Cut the clutter. Organize. As the great author A. A. Milne said, “Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.” The home page is all mixed up.

RoadTrucker

Post from: Web Pages That Suck — Daily Sucker

RoadTrucker — The Daily Sucker for Friday, January 8, 2010

The Ugliest / Worst Web Sites of 2009

Posted by Vincent Flanders at 7:44 am

Overall, 2009 was a much worse year for web design than I ever expected. On the other hand, there are a lot more web sites today than back in 1996 when I started WPTS. On a percentage basis, we might be improving.

A lot of non-profit organizations need to fix their web sites. There’s more at stake with a non-profit web site and they have more responsibility to “get it right.”

Ugliest / Worst Business Web Sites of 2009, But You Can Learn Something From Them

Ugliest / Worst Business Web Sites of 2009

Ugliest / Worst Business Web Sites to Navigate in 2009

Ugliest / Worst Web Sites of 2009: Honorary Winners

Ugliest / Worst Over The Top Web Sites of 2009

Ugliest / Worst Non-Profit Web Sites of 2009

Post from: Web Pages That Suck — Daily Sucker

The Ugliest / Worst Web Sites of 2009 – The Final Lists

PARTNERS + simons — The Daily Sucker for Thur, Dec 31, 2009

Posted by Vincent Flanders at 8:37 am

PARTNERS + simons

Submitter’s comments: Static image so important, they had to hide the navigation. Never had to ‘drag’ a hidden nav-bar open before.

Vincent Flanders’ comments: What’s worse is that the hidden navigation doesn’t always show up. It didn’t show up on my IE 7, but it did on IE8. Here are some BrowserCam screen shots that show the hidden navigation doesn’t always show up.

PARTNERS + simons

Post from: Web Pages That Suck — Daily Sucker

PARTNERS + simons — The Daily Sucker for Thursday, December 31, 2009

Danneman Signs — Daily Sucker for Wed, Dec 30, 2009

Posted by Vincent Flanders at 4:59 am

Danneman Signs

Submitter’s comments: Yikes!

Vincent Flanders’ comments: What drives me stark raving crazy is the fact that I can’t read some of the text. Why? Because there’s not enough contrast.

Does anyone with two working eyes ever look at their pages and notice that the text is impossible/hard to read?

Danneman Signs

Post from: Web Pages That Suck — Daily Sucker

Danneman Signs — The Daily Sucker for Wednesday, December 30, 2009

My Social Links of Interest For Dec 2009

Posted by Vincent Flanders at 4:08 am

Article: “10 signs you don’t understand web analytics” – http://bit.ly/7OXVUm

Post from: Web Pages That Suck — Daily Sucker

My Social Networking Links of Interest on December 29, 2009 at 1:34 am