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So people should ignore Google? Yeah, I'm sure that's going to make them wads of cash.

One good resource is http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/ you can seriously learn quite a bit about design by anlyzing bad design -- you can also do the same by looking at good design - just ask yourself what makes it work/not work, but I would start with webpagesthatsuck.com. In my experience with design students, it's easer to learn what's bad an avoid it, than to learn what's good and persue it. When in doubt, simplify. Look at google, apple for inspiration.

Chairs are for sitting, PDF is for printing

I completely agree with that, but decided to click the link anyway. Read halfway down, glanced over to the side, and what do I see?

Free Chapter from "Son of Web Pages That Suck" (PDF from Sybex via ftp 3.25Mb)

Thank you kind sir, for the hearty laugh.

Chairs are for sitting, PDF is for printing
And a Japanese University server is probably quite likely to be able to handle a Slashdotting (although it looked like it was feeling the strain when I clicked through).

this already exists... it is called webpagesthatsuck.com. We used it in my web design class to help learn what *not* to do when designing a page...

may be they should have visited this before designing the website.

cLive ;-)

Speaking of design, maybe you should get rid of the Mystery Meat Navigation on your abaddon website.

[To mofo.com] First let me say that your corporate name, MOFO, sounds as if it were specifically designed to strike fear into the hearts of anyone you deal with. Or perhaps you just don't understand the slang meaning of the term MOFO.

Vincent Flanders of Web Pages That Suck used Morrison & Foerster LLP (mofo.com) as an example of bad domain name choice. The other one used as an example was analtech.com (that's right, it's not that kind of company =)

The article is no longer on the WPTS site, but the WPTS book has this bit: "...I received a lot of e-mail explaining the choice. Basically, the law firm knows what it means, and they're proud of their name because they want to have the image of a law firm you don't want to mess with."

webpagesthatsuck.com does not accept submissions with sites from "webdesigners".

Quote: No personal pages (personal pages are supposed to reflect the individual's personality, artistic freedom, and lack of taste -- a commercial site is about making money) or Web site designers (it would look like a conflict of interest).
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/dailysucker/

Grr...no link....let's try again.

webpagesthatsuck.com's demo of this exploit

Here's a site that presents the worst websites on the Internet from a design standpoint. These are the sites that break the web 'rules'. My favorite is Mystery Meat Navigation, where you have to float your mouse over some obscure design to see where the link goes.

...when Bill Gates didn't say "content is king", or something like that.

I'm reminded of this site when I recall all the personal websites I've seen.

I would have to disagree slightly. In a mom+pop shop in the high street it is possible for them to see how customers shop and rearrange stock accordingly. Making web pages however is a not as easy. They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder and sometimes less than intuative. This is good example of how not to do things

Rus

Sorry, I meant This Site instead. The first link contains alot of crap.

'Webpages that suck' Shows that webpages CAN be art - bad art.

I'm currently working on an web hosting admin system for my employer, and I've brought up the issue of accessability. With over 1 million people in the US either blind, or with severe sight problems, we don't want to alienate potential customers through bad design.

And then there are the people (like me) that do not want to install flash because of all the bad eye candy out there (combined with disabling animations, my browsing experience is now bearable). Yesterday, I visited a barebones PC site, looking for a new box. Their homepage was a useless flash file, therefore they lose out on my custom.

Oh, and the site you were looking for is web pages that suck, and the term you are looking for is mystery meat navigation.

.02

cLive ;-)

That's got to be the most annoying website design in the history of history.

I agree. The flashing (seems like 50Hz) gave me a headache right away. And the "mystery meat" navigation really had me going for a while. I didn't realize at first that some of the items had a sub-menu!

I've just submitted this page to Web Pages That Suck. Hopefully the site authors will get a clue.

I guess that's what happens when you hire someone who just finished reading "Teach Yourself JavaScript in 3 Easy Lessons Using Self-Hypnosis While Sleeping". It's an easy enough language to learn, the trick is knowing when not to use it.

Here is another one for this list:

Web Pages that Suck Sort of a "dont do this or you'll end up on my web site" site.

This site has been pushing the same "save the flashy stuff for art, make your store usable *first*" message for a long time. I still see mystery meat all the time though...

There were a few very effective pages on Web Pages That Suck which brought how how Art can be highly effective, or a barrier to the target (i.e. don't put 2.5Meg of images on your home page, users on modems will lose interest) I personally dispise Flash homepages and have thus uninstalled it Flash, and good riddance.

Conversely, Linux, if lead by people so dedicated to some technical aspect to the detriment of functionality would make your point, however, I think enough of Open Source and Linux projects have moved beyond that stage, hence Gnome and KDE. Looking back at software of 10 years ago should bring home that interfaces have gotten much better, though some were great to begin with and the bad ones have just been catching up.

The "How to write Unmaintainable Code" article on the web is an excellent resource for documentation - much as "Web Pages that Suck is an excellent guide for web designers.

Your organisation - even if it's just 1 man and a dog - should already have a style guide in place. Don't have one? Well then it's easy, there are plenty of good ones on the Net, for Java, C++,Lisp,MATLAB, Ada and many others.

A good list of C and C++ styleguides is here. Just pick one. The important thing is to make sure everyone uses the same one, exactly which one is more a religious issue than anything else. That's an over-simplification, some really are better than others, but at least all the ones on that list have been tried, tested and peer-reviewed.

As for my own opinions, a few issues

• Make variable names meaningful. If you do this, then most of your comments will be metadata, e.g why you did something, and who and when a change was made, rather than what is being done. If you're doing something tricky or unusual, then having a pseudocode preamble can be worthwhile.
• If you can, try to use a relatively high-level language like Ada rather than a low-level one like C. But this is almost never under your control. The Javadoc auto-documentation tool is one of the biggest plusses that Java has over other languages - so if programming in Java, Use It!!

Or an in-browser app that automatically Google-linked everything in a page? Like M$'s proposed auto-linking, but populist. True hypertext.

Good luck! Don't count on feeling lucky d;-)

I think this URL was actually featured in the original WebPagesThatSuck book, as an example of extremely bad naming of domains...

One of the primary reasons people started using the net was that the information there, compared to, say, what could be found in a library, was easy and quick to find, and the information was to the point. Now the web has filled with masses of rubbish from websites trying to make money, our time is being taken up more and more finding what we want amongst the quagmire of crap. One doesn't have to wonder why websites like Google have become so popular (not to mention Web Pages That Suck). People aren't surfing as much any more, they have already found the sites they like and are sticking to them.

* To write the most Obscure/Obfuscated C program under the rules below.
* To show the importance of programming style, in an ironic way.
* To stress C compilers with unusual code.
* To illustrate some of the subtleties of the C language.
* To provide a safe forum for poor C code. :-)

Web site design needs a lot of different things, Information architecture & usability, HTML & XHTML, CSS & implementation bugs, search engine ideas and keyword research, Web server techniques & content management, deeziner discussion & tech discussion, good practices & sucky practices.

I could go on. My point is that you can either be a half-hearted jack-of-all-trades, or do the Web a favour and pick something, learn to understand it and collaborate with people who have complimentary skills.

Of course a Web site is no use if no one visits it. A link from the /. home page is a good start.

Calum

Damn, that was a good post. I'm keeping a copy of it.

Thanks, that's nice to hear. :) I'm keeping a copy too, and maybe one day I'll make a website from it. It's good to know that people actually find it interesting. These are all important things, but unfortunately most of web designers don't care about them. When my Lynx or Galeon can't render a website which I absolutely have to see (and it's the only place with the information I need), I can always use Netscape and everything is fine (except for microsoft.com which usually crash my Netscape for some reason). But there are people who can't use Netscape or Internet Explorer on their Braille terminal or speech synthesiser and they are effectively unable to use most of the Web. That's very sad. We have 21st century, all the informations they need are there on-line, but they can't reach them because of web designers ignorance. There are no borders for them other than ignorance of web designers.

Web Pages That Suck is a great site for learning about good design through bad design.

Very good one, I didn't know it before. It reminded me ESR's HTML Hell Page: How not to design junk Web pages. I see it has changed a lot in the last few years since I last saw it. Now there are many things from my post (or maybe in my post there are many things from HTML Hell), but I'll still tell you about it even if it makes my comment less insightful. ;) So, the HTML Hell Page is surely worth reading, there are also links to other similar websites:

Here's a list of gripes similar to this one. And there's a fine rant about web page design by C. J. Silverio. Horrible Examples of bad technique are listed at Web Pages That Suck. Jakob Nielsen's column Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design is very good. The Yale Style Guide is worth reading.

I haven't seen all of the above links yet, but I'm sure they're interesting.

Regarding disabled access, try Bobbie as your automatic checker.

Thanks. I knew about it, but I forgot the name. It's a great tool. But there's one thing I don't like about Bobby, it's the license:

"No Reverse Engineering. Licensee shall not modify, adapt, translate, prepare derivative works from, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble or otherwise attempt to derive source code from the Licensed Software or documentation therefor, except and only to the extent that such activity is expressly permitted by applicable law notwithstanding this limitation. Licensee shall not remove, obscure, or alter any copyright notices, trademark notices, or other proprietary rights notices affixed to or contained within the Licensed Software or documentation."

"License Fee. Licensee shall pay CAST or its designee a license fee for each simultaneous user of the Licensed Software ("Single User License Fee") or each server on which it shall install the Licensed Software ("Server License Fee") as set forth at http://www.cast.org/bobby/DownloadBobby316.cfm."

They say on the main page:

"Bobby was created by CAST to help Web page authors identify and repair significant barriers to access by individuals with disabilities."

"Center for Applied Special Technology, CAST is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to expand opportunities for people with disabilities through innovative uses of computer technology."

"Above, you can test a Web page using our server version of Bobby Worldwide. This server version gives you a preview of the downloadable version of Bobby Worldwide."

But the downloadable version costs:

Single User copy: $99.00
Site License of server version: $3,000.00 per server
Multiple server site license: $2,000.00 per server for 5 or more servers

I think it's exactly the kind of software which should be released as a free software. Yes, I'm a free software freak, so in my opinion every software is exactly the kind of software which should be released as a free software...

But this is software made by "a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to expand opportunities for people with disabilities through innovative uses of computer technology".

I could tell my employer:
-- Hey, maybe we could install Bobby on the servers?
-- What's that?
-- It's a program to expand opportunities for people with disabilities.
-- Does it cost anything?
-- It's free-as-in-beer.
-- Sure, why not.
but when I tell him that it'll cost him $3k per server... You know what the answer would be even if we only need a single user copy for 100 bucks.

Bobby would serve its purpose much better if it was released as a free software. I'd be proud to contribute patches to Bobby, as I'm sure would lots of other people, and best of all, much more people would use Bobby. If there is any place for proprietary software, it's not software which "was created [...] to help [...] identify and repair significant barriers to access by individuals with disabilities."

In other words: great idea, fatal license.

Keep graphics content (hence download time) low, and always compress images using Gifbot or something similar.

Good point, it's a very important thing which I didn't say about at all. I noticed that I wait the same time for the average website to load today on 768kb/s DSL, as I waited few years ago on 28.8kb/s modem.

I didn't know Gifbot. It's great, because people who don't understand the image compression techniques (i.e. most of people making personal webpages) can improve ther graphics and save time and bandwidth. It only lacks PNG output which is important to me, not only because of the GIF problems, but because it's a great format, even recommended by The World Wide Web Consortium and it has Adam7 interlacing feature for great progressive loading on slow connections, very good for the WWW (see this image or this one if your connection is to fast to notice the effect), read more about Adam7 interlacing on stl.caltech.edu Introduction to PNG.

What I would add about the graphics is to first of all, always use JPEG for photographs, and always use PNG for computer generated graphics (logos, headers, text, screenshots). Of course there are sitiations when it's better to use PNG for photo or JPEG for something generated (like rendered landscapes), but for most of situations (especially for usual homepages) this rule works great: JPEG for photos, PNG for logos.

People sometimes use JPEG for flat few-color logos, which looks terrible on the hard edges and solid color areas. People also (however not so often) use PNG or GIF to save photos, and they are ten times larger than JPEG of the same quality.

My personal choice for editing web graphics is The Gimp, it's a great tool especially for web designing purposes. It has a great JPEG saving dialog, where you can set different quality values and see the real-time preview, so you can save at the lowest quality (highest compression) when you don't see the difference, You can also set subsampling type or DCT method and restart markers for more advanced users.

I almost forgot! See the Cooltext.com:

"Cooltext.com is an online graphics generator for web pages and anywhere else you might need an impressive logo without a lot of work. We provides real-time generation of graphics customized exactly the way you want them.

Simply choose what kind of image you would like to create. Then, fill out a form and you'll have your own images created on the fly.

Cooltext.com will always be available for use free of charge."

They use Gimp as the backend so it's a great introduction to Gimp power as a web graphics authoring tool. Everyone should check out Cooltext, you can make great logos in few seconds. Great for lazy webmasters who want to have nice websites with no effort. Great preview of Gimp.

Speaking about the software, another great tool I use daily is ImageMagick. The best set of programs I've seen for conversion, optimizing and compression of lots of pictures at the same time. Once I used it to automatically scale, stretch contrast, add logos, compress and save over 10,000 pictures. It took over two days to my PC back then, but it was two days of rest for me. It would've taken me weeks if I'd had to do it manually.

Important links: PNG home, PNG at W3C, JPEG home, JPEG at W3C, The Gimp, Cooltext, ImageMagick.

Great, I wrote another comment for ten screens, while I should work instead... But what can I do, when I have a subject which is one of the main areas of my interest? Actually I didn't realize that I have so much to say about web design, maybe I should write a book, teach or something... It reminds me a funny situation I had few months ago:

A friend of mine phoned me once and asked:
-- Tell me, how do you make websites?
I saw all of my life scrolling before my eyes. I was trying to figure out where to start my answer, and after ten seconds of my silence, he said:
-- But hurry up, I'm using a cell phone.
Here I started to laugh like a mad man, and I couldn't explain him why I laughed when he kept asking me, because I couldn't stop laughing.

He really thought that I could explain everything to him in few minutes... Later I told him, that I had been learning how to make websites for many years, and now he's proud that he's the man who asked me to summarize many years of my life in few minutes. I tried to give him few books but he thought it'd be faster and even when I suggested Netscape Composer, it wasn't worth the effort for him... :) Great story, I always laugh when I remember it.

That's about it. I say again, Damn that was a good post. 5++ (Moderators please mod original post up).

Thanks once again. It's good to know that there's someone who likes it more than the moderators. :)

From the last minute: I just found The greatest WWW page ever!

Damn, that was a good post. I'm keeping a copy of it.

Thanks, that's nice to hear. :) I'm keeping a copy too, and maybe one day I'll make a website from it. It's good to know that people actually find it interesting. These are all important things, but unfortunately most of web designers don't care about them. When my Lynx or Galeon can't render a website which I absolutely have to see (and it's the only place with the information I need), I can always use Netscape and everything is fine (except for microsoft.com which usually crash my Netscape for some reason). But there are people who can't use Netscape or Internet Explorer on their Braille terminal or speech synthesiser and they are effectively unable to use most of the Web. That's very sad. We have 21st century, all the informations they need are there on-line, but they can't reach them because of web designers ignorance. There are no borders for them other than ignorance of web designers.

Web Pages That Suck is a great site for learning about good design through bad design.

Very good one, I didn't know it before. It reminded me ESR's HTML Hell Page: How not to design junk Web pages. I see it has changed a lot in the last few years since I last saw it. Now there are many things from my post (or maybe in my post there are many things from HTML Hell), but I'll still tell you about it even if it makes my comment less insightful. ;) So, the HTML Hell Page is surely worth reading, there are also links to other similar websites:

Here's a list of gripes similar to this one. And there's a fine rant about web page design by C. J. Silverio. Horrible Examples of bad technique are listed at Web Pages That Suck. Jakob Nielsen's column Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design is very good. The Yale Style Guide is worth reading.

I haven't seen all of the above links yet, but I'm sure they're interesting.

Regarding disabled access, try Bobbie as your automatic checker.

Thanks. I knew about it, but I forgot the name. It's a great tool. But there's one thing I don't like about Bobby, it's the license:

"No Reverse Engineering. Licensee shall not modify, adapt, translate, prepare derivative works from, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble or otherwise attempt to derive source code from the Licensed Software or documentation therefor, except and only to the extent that such activity is expressly permitted by applicable law notwithstanding this limitation. Licensee shall not remove, obscure, or alter any copyright notices, trademark notices, or other proprietary rights notices affixed to or contained within the Licensed Software or documentation."

"License Fee. Licensee shall pay CAST or its designee a license fee for each simultaneous user of the Licensed Software ("Single User License Fee") or each server on which it shall install the Licensed Software ("Server License Fee") as set forth at http://www.cast.org/bobby/DownloadBobby316.cfm."

They say on the main page:

"Bobby was created by CAST to help Web page authors identify and repair significant barriers to access by individuals with disabilities."

"Center for Applied Special Technology, CAST is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to expand opportunities for people with disabilities through innovative uses of computer technology."

"Above, you can test a Web page using our server version of Bobby Worldwide. This server version gives you a preview of the downloadable version of Bobby Worldwide."

But the downloadable version costs:

Single User copy: $99.00
Site License of server version: $3,000.00 per server
Multiple server site license: $2,000.00 per server for 5 or more servers

I think it's exactly the kind of software which should be released as a free software. Yes, I'm a free software freak, so in my opinion every software is exactly the kind of software which should be released as a free software...

But this is software made by "a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to expand opportunities for people with disabilities through innovative uses of computer technology".

I could tell my employer:
-- Hey, maybe we could install Bobby on the servers?
-- What's that?
-- It's a program to expand opportunities for people with disabilities.
-- Does it cost anything?
-- It's free-as-in-beer.
-- Sure, why not.
but when I tell him that it'll cost him $3k per server... You know what the answer would be even if we only need a single user copy for 100 bucks.

Bobby would serve its purpose much better if it was released as a free software. I'd be proud to contribute patches to Bobby, as I'm sure would lots of other people, and best of all, much more people would use Bobby. If there is any place for proprietary software, it's not software which "was created [...] to help [...] identify and repair significant barriers to access by individuals with disabilities."

In other words: great idea, fatal license.

Keep graphics content (hence download time) low, and always compress images using Gifbot or something similar.

Good point, it's a very important thing which I didn't say about at all. I noticed that I wait the same time for the average website to load today on 768kb/s DSL, as I waited few years ago on 28.8kb/s modem.

I didn't know Gifbot. It's great, because people who don't understand the image compression techniques (i.e. most of people making personal webpages) can improve ther graphics and save time and bandwidth. It only lacks PNG output which is important to me, not only because of the GIF problems, but because it's a great format, even recommended by The World Wide Web Consortium and it has Adam7 interlacing feature for great progressive loading on slow connections, very good for the WWW (see this image or this one if your connection is to fast to notice the effect), read more about Adam7 interlacing on stl.caltech.edu Introduction to PNG.

What I would add about the graphics is to first of all, always use JPEG for photographs, and always use PNG for computer generated graphics (logos, headers, text, screenshots). Of course there are sitiations when it's better to use PNG for photo or JPEG for something generated (like rendered landscapes), but for most of situations (especially for usual homepages) this rule works great: JPEG for photos, PNG for logos.

People sometimes use JPEG for flat few-color logos, which looks terrible on the hard edges and solid color areas. People also (however not so often) use PNG or GIF to save photos, and they are ten times larger than JPEG of the same quality.

My personal choice for editing web graphics is The Gimp, it's a great tool especially for web designing purposes. It has a great JPEG saving dialog, where you can set different quality values and see the real-time preview, so you can save at the lowest quality (highest compression) when you don't see the difference, You can also set subsampling type or DCT method and restart markers for more advanced users.

I almost forgot! See the Cooltext.com:

"Cooltext.com is an online graphics generator for web pages and anywhere else you might need an impressive logo without a lot of work. We provides real-time generation of graphics customized exactly the way you want them.

Simply choose what kind of image you would like to create. Then, fill out a form and you'll have your own images created on the fly.

Cooltext.com will always be available for use free of charge."

They use Gimp as the backend so it's a great introduction to Gimp power as a web graphics authoring tool. Everyone should check out Cooltext, you can make great logos in few seconds. Great for lazy webmasters who want to have nice websites with no effort. Great preview of Gimp.

Speaking about the software, another great tool I use daily is ImageMagick. The best set of programs I've seen for conversion, optimizing and compression of lots of pictures at the same time. Once I used it to automatically scale, stretch contrast, add logos, compress and save over 10,000 pictures. It took over two days to my PC back then, but it was two days of rest for me. It would've taken me weeks if I'd had to do it manually.

Important links: PNG home, PNG at W3C, JPEG home, JPEG at W3C, The Gimp, Cooltext, ImageMagick.

Great, I wrote another comment for ten screens, while I should work instead... But what can I do, when I have a subject which is one of the main areas of my interest? Actually I didn't realize that I have so much to say about web design, maybe I should write a book, teach or something... It reminds me a funny situation I had few months ago:

A friend of mine phoned me once and asked:
-- Tell me, how do you make websites?
I saw all of my life scrolling before my eyes. I was trying to figure out where to start my answer, and after ten seconds of my silence, he said:
-- But hurry up, I'm using a cell phone.
Here I started to laugh like a mad man, and I couldn't explain him why I laughed when he kept asking me, because I couldn't stop laughing.

He really thought that I could explain everything to him in few minutes... Later I told him, that I had been learning how to make websites for many years, and now he's proud that he's the man who asked me to summarize many years of my life in few minutes. I tried to give him few books but he thought it'd be faster and even when I suggested Netscape Composer, it wasn't worth the effort for him... :) Great story, I always laugh when I remember it.

That's about it. I say again, Damn that was a good post. 5++ (Moderators please mod original post up).

Thanks once again. It's good to know that there's someone who likes it more than the moderators. :)

From the last minute: I just found The greatest WWW page ever!

Damn, that was a good post. I'm keeping a copy of it.

I could make very few improvements to it, all minor:

• Web Pages That Suck is a great site for learning about good design through bad design.
• Regarding disabled access, try Bobbie as your automatic checker.
• Target your audience. If your site is for a rock group, by all means Flash away, go nuts. If it's trying to sell something, remember time is money to your clients. Keep graphics content (hence download time) low, and always compress images using Gifbot or something similar.

That's about it. I say again, Damn that was a good post. 5++ (Moderators please mod original post up).

I have found that one of the best ways to have good web design is to simply review crappy web designs. Web Pages that Suck put me well on my way to making web pages that are slightly more than mediocre.

Web Pages That Suck
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/

These domain names are fun, but nothing beats and original like WebPagesThatSuck.com ...

or a better yet .... nothing says suck like grabbing your nemises domain name before they did original owner of PETA.Com ... here are some examples via WPTS : Domain Names

These domain names are fun, but nothing beats and original like WebPagesThatSuck.com ...

or a better yet .... nothing says suck like grabbing your nemises domain name before they did original owner of PETA.Com ... here are some examples via WPTS : Domain Names

Sometimes people have really great ideas that get put out on the Web and like minded individuals flock to them. Other times you end up with utter crap.

Reminds me of Web Pages That Suck: THE BOOK. Website at http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/

These people have a great informative site in addition to the book; check out their Daily Sucker section which demonstrates bad web page design in the wild. I've learned a lot about "proper" web development by browsing their online examples.

These people have a great informative site in addition to the book; check out their Daily Sucker section which demonstrates bad web page design in the wild. I've learned a lot about "proper" web development by browsing their online examples.

Appearently, this, and the original InfoWorld article made it to WebPagesThatSuck with the point that pages produced with FrontPage are disparaging to MicroSoft's image enough, without having to say anything about the product explicitly.

• Vince Flanders
• Jakob Nielson
• Interface hall of shame

The premise is that we design Web pages that can do anything you want. Hence the ellipsis.

I think I'm going to go after Vincent Flanders' site WPTS because it dilutes my corporate image. I think that that domain should rightfully belong to me. Any lawyers in the house?

Not that it invalidates any of the points made, though...

Try to avoid doing the kinds of things that are displayed at Web Pages That Suck. Vincent Flanders may be a crusty old man, but sometimes the best way to do something right is to know how it's done wrong first.

That's John Stuart Mill, the same guy who supported the Marketplace of Ideas -- everyone has the right to promote their own "propaganda" (whether it's guinness-rules.com or guinness-sucks.com), because the only way to decide which opinions are correct is to allow all opinions to be expressed, and then decide on the most reasonable ones. I'm sure that no one at Guinness was severely traumatized by any anti-Guinness comments; therefore, there's no reason to censor anti-Guinness speech.

Domain names might be a little more complicated -- domain names are not just forms of expression, they're also navigation tools and site identifiers. Although I vehemently oppose rejecting domain names based on supposed intent, I do think that Guinness might have a valid point when it complains about language-based confusion. Though "sucks," to me, seems to be one of the core words of the English language ;), maybe it would be confusing to foreign visitors -- I really don't know.

But just how valuable is the free speech embodied in a domain name? Domain names are powerful, but not supremely so. If you've got a massive site proving Guinness to be of inferior quality, it doesn't really matter if your site is at http://www.guinness-sucks.com/ or http://members.nbci.com/guinness-sucks/ -- as long as you have an audience, your message gets across.

We definitely shouldn't allow domain names to be rejected for silly reasons like intent for their creation, but at the same time, we shouldn't attach too much importance to the minimal amount of free expression embodied in a URL.

webpagesthatsuck might be a different matter, though :)

- Illya

Every major web browsers support Gopher, there's no reason not to use it. Gopher pages tend to be more content-rich than web pages -- Gopher simply does not allow Zero-Content sludge.

I see useless web sites all the time. Some newbie puts together a page with links to a few well-known web sites and publishes the trash on the World Wide Web, usually using a free web hosting service. Apatheticy to follow the HTML standards, unreadable fonts, annoying security JavaScript/VBScript/ActiveX/Java security holes, and eye burning colors are what make most of the web so ugly.

Admittedly, the World Wide Web is much more flexible and powerful than Gopher. Gopher is inferior to WWW. However, with power comes resposibility. ~99% of all web publishers are not resposible enough to follow the standards and make operable pages. Too many web pages suck.

Gopher does not give the publisher power to publish pages that suck. Gopher's directory listing makes this simply not possible. Of course, someone could host a Gopher site listing nothing, but what would be the point of that? I have never connected to a horrible Gopher site, and I have connected to thousands of horrible WWW sites.

Gopher serves what matters -- pure information. The original version of Gopher, now sometimes known as Gopher0, supports only a few data types, the most frequently used being text. (Gopher+ uses MIME content types, however). What other content types do you need than text? On the other hand, the World Wide Web is able to represent tables, frames, links, and many other useless features. Gopher is so simple and unbloated unlike HTML and the WWW.

The WWW sucks, because it can. Gopher will never suck.

The question is, will Gopher take off? Not a chance. Gopher will remain used by a select few, unlike the WWW. It will never have the trillions of zero content "homepages" and commericialization the WWW has. And frankly, I like it that way. Ever seen an advertisement on a Gopher server?

Flanders? Oh, please. His Web Pages that Suck site used to be a fairly blatant Mirsky/Stev0 rip-off that gave pointers on designing slick sites that shill whatever you're selling, and now it is a fairly blatant shill for the book he's selling. I love capitalism — bleah.

Perhaps the icons are logical, but when given mystery meat navigation, she is most likely confused. That's the thing with icons, they have to be targeted, and they have to mean the same thing to all people. This fellow is talking about an international effort, and therefore must not only translate, but localise his content.

Localisation involves matching culture to the point that an add doesn't give the wrong impression.

I run my own web design company, I wouldn't hire her based on what I see of her work on Linda.com. The colors are garish and the text is hard to read against the backdrop. On top of all that, when you click on a link (tips), the left navigation bar goes away. Rule #1 of web design is consistency.

She is no expert. I would like to see an interview with the folks at WebPagesThatSuck.com. At least they are up front about what works and doesn't, and they tell you.

...richie

Many corporate web sites are unaccessible. Webpagesthatsuck.com.