2006 Webby Award Winners Announced

Wired is reporting that the winners for the 2006 Webby Awards have been announced and the usual suspects have dominated the scene. From the article: "With a record 65 award categories, this year's Webby honorees ranged from well-known sites like the (Washington Post, a popular vote winner for best newspaper site, to more obscure newcomers, like Remember Segregation, named best home page. As in years past, the honoree list included several winners of multiple awards, along with perennial favorites that have won Webbys previously."

Comments

Summary Incomplete

[paulthomas]

You guys forgot to mention that Cute Overload won the People's Voice Webby.

Come on!

Re:Summary Incomplete

[Kelson]

You guys forgot to mention that Cute Overload won the People's Voice Webby.

Yeah, I couldn't figure out how they managed to miss that. After all, Slashdot introduced the site to a whole new audience!

Re:Summary Incomplete

[jb.hl.com]

Yeah, I couldn't figure out how they managed to miss that. After all, Slashdot introduced the site to a whole new audience!

I think you're thinking of Goatse.

Re:Summary Incomplete

[mapkinase]

I have to complain again about these awards: how come the site titled Cute Overlord won the Webby without even having a Ponies category???

Re:Summary Incomplete

[hkgroove]

Well, Slashdot can't take full credit for goatse.

Fucked Company and Something Awful had much to do with the desensitizing of viewers. On FC I can't remember many threads when the first reply was "don't click! goatse!" because, well, it was.

It still amazes me how many people I can freak out with that image.

Re:Summary Incomplete

[BlackShirt]

cute oveload [slashdot.org] ...

Re:Summary Incomplete

[bagsc]

[13-year-old voice] LOL!!!!!!!! BBQ!!!! OMG, Sooooo kewl!!!

Google Earth named best visual design

[stu42j]

Last I checked, Google Earth was not a website.

Re:Google Earth named best visual design

[MrTeter]

Who cares? All these awards shows are just about politics, anyway. The real question is what did Google Earth wear to the ceremony?

Re:Google Earth named best visual design

[Evro]

http://earth.google.com/

The design of that page is pretty breathtaking!

Re:Google Earth named best visual design

[Geoff]

I'm not sure, but I hear there was a huge cleavage along the Colorado River in Arizona.

Geoff

Re:Google Earth named best visual design

[sharkey]

Is that where Chelsea Charms lives? Wouldn't suprise me if you could see them from space.

Re:Google Earth named best visual design

[lbmouse]

"Who cares? All these awards shows are just about politics, anyway."

That's the same line people hear Tom Cruise mutter sometime in February/March of every year.

Take it you weren't nominated?

Webbies? How about the Flashies?

[Makenai]

Seriously, can they rename these things the flashies? Withouth the plugin, I can't see 90% of the pages up there. Shouldn't RememberSegregation.com be in HTML and compatible across all browsers for equality? They don't even have a separate but equal HTML version. No flash, no cigar.

PERSONAL WEB SITE

[mapkinase]

I would personally kill the PERSONAL WEB SITE winner for messing with the size of my Firefox window. I wonder how come such arrogant annoyance of a site can win in any category?

Re:PERSONAL WEB SITE

[PCM2]

I wonder how come such arrogant annoyance of a site can win in any category?

It's easy -- you have hit upon the origin and sole function of the Webby Awards.

Re:PERSONAL WEB SITE

[Anonymous Coward]

By hijacking your browser, I think the site was making a sly commentary on the arrogance of government that uses coercion to force integration down student's throats, choosing in many cases to value pc social engineering over quality education and the human nature to self-segregate into clans even under perfect conditions.

Re:PERSONAL WEB SITE

[Boxy Brown]

You should disable the "Allow sripts to: Move or resize existing windows" option. I hate it too.

For Firefox 1.5
->Tools
->Options
->Content
->Advanced (next to the "Enable JavaScript" checkbox)
->Uncheck "Move or resize existing windows"

In older versions, you have to open the configuration file and disable from there.

Re:PERSONAL WEB SITE

[Shawn is an Asshole]

If you're using Firefox like you said, there is a fix for sites like that.

In the menu, click on "Edit" and go to "Preferences". When the prefereces dialog opens select the "Content" tab. Text to the checkbox and label "Enable JavaScript" click on the "Advanced" button. Uncheck "Move or resize existing windows".

Personally, I leave them all unchecked.

Re:PERSONAL WEB SITE

[tljohnsn]

Thank you. This comment was very helpful. I wished I'd known about this earlier. By the way, in my version of firefox, it was in the "Web Features" tab, not the content tab.

Re:Remember Segetation?

[gefafwysp]

I think this site made it onto Web Pages That Suck a while ago, so I'm glad that I can now recycle my comment of "Non-Flash user? Get to the back of the bus!" ;)

Re:Remember Segetation?

[dotpavan]

the link in story takes to the above URL, which is different from what I saw in the awards list which has dot org instead of dot com!

Always remember segregation

[Anonymous Coward]

Those that do not remember to separate content from presentation are doomed to repeat separating content from presentation.

Re:Remember Segetation?

[greenguy]

It's a simple spelling error. Try the real site, http://www.remembersegregation.org, and you'll get better results.

And assuming you don't mind heavy Flash usage, it is a nice site.

Are the webbies still around?

[spun]

I knew some of the people behind this thing, and they were for the most part shallow attention seekers with the technical expertise of your average turtle. The main reason for the webbies is to throw a giant party for their friends on someone else's dime. Back in the .com days everyone thought they were hot shit. I kinda thought they had slunk back into the marketing sewer they crawled out of. Make no mistake, geeks, the webbies were created by the popular kids who picked on us in high school, not by or for fellow geeks.

I mean, I could see some industry group giving out awards, like the Academy awards, or even a bunch of trade journalists, like the Golden Globes, but the webbies are just some guys who said, "How can we make a buck off this Internet thingy? I know! We can get paid to throw a huge party and hand out some made-up awards!"

Sorry for the rant, but these guys epitomize everything that was wrong with the .com boom.

Re:Are the webbies still around?

[slashflood]

I guess you're right: the event.

Re:Are the webbies still around?

[stlhawkeye]

The thing is, I see some pages there that deserve recognition. And I see a lot more who don't, and which appear to have been selected not for any particular contribution to the web, the use of the web, or technology in general, but simply for standing for something noble. I mean, anybody can set up a web site for www.we-really-care-alot-about-the-world-and-its-my riad-problems.com and put a bunch of pictures up telling us how shitty the world is, and we all feel a little less guilty for living in a prosperous industrialized nation, but is that worthy of a reward?

Breakout of the Year?

[cashman73]

Kind of a sad day in the history of the internet when MySpace wins a Webby Award. Shouldn't, "Breakout of the Year," in fact be, "Broken HTML of the Year?"

What's the equivalent of the Razzies for websites?

Re:Breakout of the Year?

[Beaker74]

I seem to remember around the mid 90's a funny site called Mirsky's Worst of the Web.

They would have links to odd and badly composed websites... Used to be my required reading when I went to the college library to surf the web.

Re:Breakout of the Year?

[generic-man]

I think of "Web Pages That Suck" as the Razzies of the web.

I used to check out LOSERS dot ORG as well, but that site is more a condemnation of people than of web site design.

Re:Breakout of the Year?

[eexlebots]

I think that would be SomethingAwful and their Awful Links of the Day.

Re:Breakout of the Year?

[sdsichero]

Hmnn how's SPAMies or PHISHies

Acceptance Speech...

[Aqua_boy17]

"As in years past, honorees will be limited to five word acceptance speeches."

I would like to thank

Seriously though, nice to see NPR getting some props.

Snopes.com is weird?

[httpamphibio.us]

Anyone remember when the winner of this award was ACTUALLY weird? jodi.org perhaps? Most of these sites seem to be net.humor sites.

+1 Insightful ... no, make that Informative

[PCM2]

I actually think it would be shameful for any of the award winners to show up. I notice that the awards ceremony won't be held in San Francisco this year. I take that as further evidence that we have successfully run these clowns out of town on a rail.

"International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences"? My ass. Pray, just what sciences do these esteemed luminaries represent?

Hey, America! New York needs rescuing here. Nebraska? Wisconsin? Arkansas? West Virginia? Surely there's some other state with a town hall big enough to hold this cute little catillion, where the rest of us won't have to hear about it?

Re:+1 Insightful ... no, make that Informative

[TopShelf]

In the spirit of the event, maybe they could just host the event on an IRC channel and save all parties involved a lot of travel.

Re:+1 Insightful ... no, make that Informative

[spun]

These guys wouldn't know IRC if it kickbanned them in the ass. They have trouble with AIM. Besides, they don't give a rat's ass about the web, unless it's a site put up by one of those guys they did all that E with at Burning Man. They just wanna party, and you can't share drugs over IRC.

Not that I have any problem with drugs. Just shallow people.

Re:Remember Segetation?

[spezz]

It's a nice site, and it means well, but it does a couple of funny things.

First of all it uses the silhouette of Martin Luther King, Jr. as a thermometer bar to load the page. When your activist is fully black, your page is loaded. Not horribly disrespectful, but getting into strange territory.

And secondly, after the immediate shock of being presented with "are you white or colored" we're brought to the same page. So while the point of the site (and arguably this country) is "there is no separate but equal" the design of the site is leading you via separate paths to the same place.

Did anyone notice this?

[mapkinase]

1. BLOG - POLITICAL

              WEBBY AWARD WINNER
        AGENCY/CREDITED ORGANIZATION
                    The Huffington Post HuffingtonPost.com
                    http://www./ huffingtonpost.com

2. http:/// ariannaonline.huffingtonpost.com/

3. http://www.webbyawards.com/about/index.php:

The Academy is an intellectually diverse organization that includes members such as musicians Beck and David Bowie, Internet inventor Vint Cerf, political columnist Arianna Huffington...

It looks like 500 members of the Academy is a huge pool to pick the ~50 (?) winners from...

These awards don't carry any weight...

[walnut_tree]

Does anyone really pay any attention to these awards? The headline for the Wired article says it all really - "usual suspects dominate Webbys" - in other words, every year they revisit the same limited pool of websites. Of course, they can't ignore what's popular, but it's laughable that they describe themselves as a "leading international award" when the sites that have won are almost all US-centric with a few nods to the UK. Is that their idea of "international"? And how on earth did the World bank get an award for activism?!

Re:These awards don't carry any weight...

[robertjw]

I agree. I'm not sure how anyone can give awards like this these days. I see sites every day that are as good or better in design or content the sites listed in these awards. Most of the 'award winners' are flash sites that take two minutes to load and have birds chirping in the background.

Flash *IS* cross-browser.

[ClioCJS]

The issue is you refuse to install one of the main web technologies to your browser. The site IS cross-browser compatible; Flash has penetrated over 90% of the userbase of both browsers.

You don't see me whining that gmail doesn't work in lynx. Grow up. The plugin takes what, 1 second to install?

Oh, I know I know, "But I don't want it".

If you don't want to install technology to allow you to view web pages, you should not be posting on an article about awards to many webpages. You should fully expect to only ever see a fraction of the internet out there.

You're like a video collector... who wants everything to be in one codec. That just ain't gonna happen. The more codecs you install, the more videos you can play (and no, VLC doesn't play everything...).

Re:Flash *IS* cross-browser.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Flash has penetrated over 90% of the userbase of both browsers.

But everybody still hates it.

Flash is like Chicken Pox. You know you have to get it eventually, and you're sort of grateful that you did. But the expierience is often very ichy and nauseating.

Re:Flash *IS* cross-browser.

[VolciMaster]

don't see me whining that gmail doesn't work in lynx

I often access Gmail via elinks under linux, and have used it with Lynx - it sucks mightily, and most of the cool features, like chat, don't work - but it'll open and run :)

Re:Flash *IS* cross-browser.

[jlarocco]

Sigh. Your post is so stupid it almost physically hurts me to think about it.

The issue is you refuse to install one of the main web technologies to your browser. The site IS cross-browser compatible; Flash has penetrated over 90% of the userbase of both browsers.

I can think of about 15 web browsers, which two would you be talking about?

I think you're missing the GP's point. The "Remember Segregation" page shows a shit brown page of nothing when Flash is turned off. The problem isn't tasteful use of Flash. The problem is making the whole page in Flash, and not showing up at all if Flash is turned off. Not even a "You need Flash" warning. The web is based on HTML and HTTP. Not plugins. So it would make sense that the winners of an award for websites would at least show something if you don't have the correct plugins installed.

Internet Explorer has a Word Document plugin that lets you view Word documents right inside IE. Would you have been so quick to spout this nonsense if most of the sites needed to be viewed on Windows in IE with the Word plugin turned on? It's a plugin 85% of people have...

You're like a video collector... who wants everything to be in one codec. That just ain't gonna happen. The more codecs you install, the more videos you can play (and no, VLC doesn't play everything...).

Not only is that analogy stupid, it doesn't even apply here. This is more like someone writing a C program in Java. I'm sure those 100% Flash pages are great, but they kind of miss the point.

Re:Flash *IS* cross-browser.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Flash has penetrated over 90% of the userbase

And Windows has penetrated over 90% of the x86 userbase. But I'd much rather use Linux, thanks.

of both browsers.

There are more than two, as others have said.

You don't see me whining that gmail doesn't work in lynx.

Yes it does, but with fewer features. One of the primary complaints of Flash, and particularly entirely Flash websites like these, is that they don't degrade gracefully at all -- Gmail works in lynx, Flash doesn't.

Grow up. The plugin takes what, 1 second to install?

Considerably longer than that, assuming I was already running an OS and browser that could support it. It takes much longer if you count install time for Windows, or even for a 32-bit Firefox. And installing a 32-bit Firefox isn't really a solution -- at that point I can no longer really consider it a web plugin, or anything relying on it to be a web page, because I must shut down one browser and launch the other, or set up separate user accounts (increasing install time even more), in order to run my flash movies. And this is also true on 64-bit Windows, were I to use a 64-bit Windows Firefox.

Oh, I know I know, "But I don't want it".

Try: Have it on two platforms, can't have it easily on a third -- it's a huge hassle, and for not much reward. Ooh, shinier webpages.

You're like a video collector... who wants everything to be in one codec.

Three, actually. One lossy, one lossless, and one uncompressed. But so what?

The more codecs you install, the more videos you can play

The difference is, most codecs are well-behaved, can work on a 64-bit mplayer, and are not for formats which are themselves code. Those that can't can be made to work on a 32-bit mplayer with little trouble -- I just have to choose mplayer or mplayer-bin when playing a movie. However, it's a valid analogy -- I cannot watch WMVs on Linux PPC without doing x86 emulation, which is too slow to seriously contemplate for video.

So hell yes, I want to ban the WMV codec, unless it's opened up so that I can actually use it everywhere.

Oh, and let's not forget...

Yes, I'm stealing someone else's example: Would you feel differently if the pages in question were all .doc files? IE on Windows can display those, if Office is installed, reaching 85% of users and completely eliminating the others. And most Word documents would be extremely ugly as web pages, plus Word itself would take awhile to load and would slow down the machine/browser while it was running.

And this seems like the perfect place to rant about poor Flash website design: Why would you ever design a Flash page to have a fixed size? Isn't one of the major benefits of being scalable that you can keep scaling it up, and it'll keep looking better? Why are so many uses of Flash using the scalability for nothing more than saving bandwidth?

Re:Flash *IS* cross-browser.

[ClioCJS]

Flash doesn't work in lynx because Flash is something that Lynx could not possibly represent. Isn't that Lynx's fault? If someone wants to make a animation-based website, shouldn't they be allowed to? Or maybe we shoudl all stick to morse code because it works everywhere? Maybe we shouldn't use images because they don't display in Lynx, huh?
Oh, but images can have alt tags, right?
So can OBJECT tags.

You have to shut down one browser to launch the other? You have to set up separate user accounts to mitigate your sense of paranoia? God your computing-existence seems pathetic and inconvenient to me.

(WMV does suck.)

Your DOC example seems good on the surface. But a word doc is just text and images. No more or lesss than HTML. A flash IS more than HTML. There is a reason to use it -- to get to enhanced functionality that HTML cannot do. This reason would not apply to making pages as DOCs. Nice try though. Your analogy does make a point, I just think it's a bit hollow.

Fixed size is bad, but if you are doing raster-based flash instead of vector-based, you might not want people resizing your page to random dimensions. It can make text completely unreadable because the realtime antialiasing on a flash isn't that hot. That's the situation I am in when we have to create flash-based training that uses screenshots. The screenshots are not vector-based, and scaling would not look good.

But in general I would agree, for vector-based content, fixed size makes no sense. I hate it. I almost always load it in the browser without watching it, pull the SWF file out of my cache and rename it sensibly, and then view it FULL screen (on my 36-inch tv, of course) using the standalone flash player (not a browser plugin). That's my preference. Happy Tree Friends never looked so good, it's like having the DVD.

Did I win?

[robertjw]

Did I win? How much to I get?

Chase was nominated

[obender]

I think it's a pity Chase did not win. About a month ago I got an email from them inviting me to unlock my account via the internet. Their website was very easy to use and I had no problems at all filling in all the details.

I also forwarded the email to my associates, Panikovsky and Balaganov, I thought they would enjoy the services of such a nice company.

At least

[mBytz]

We-Make-Money-Not-Art and Snopes won their respective categories, giving me some hope.

MySpace.com won

[Quiet_Desperation]

I didn't know they had a Best Pedophile Hangout Site award.

Was that a low blow?

Why, yes. Yes it was.

Exhaustive Search

[raftpeople]

Quote from the organization:
"After an exhaustive search of about 38 web sites we have chosen the top 37 in a variety of categories. Although we realize there are about 14 billion web sites we did not visit, we feel pretty good about our choices."

Re:Remember Segetation?

[donovansmith]

Only problem with their heavy Flash usage is that they don't provide an HTML site, which makes it utterly useless on my machine. I run Ubuntu on an Apple iBook and there is no PPC Linux version of Flash, so a site that uses only Flash might as well not exist. Anyway, I haven't found a legitimate reason for a site to use Flash so it's not like I feel like I'm missing out on anything. Hope the webmasters on those Flash-only sites eventually realize they might as well not have a website to those of us who won't or can't use Flash.

The Onion as a news site?

[hawaiian717]

They nominated The Onion in the news site category? And it won the Humor category? Does their left mouse button not know what their right mouse button is doing?

I'm 32.

[ClioCJS]

And I guarantee my computers do more than yours. Since you can't even visit a page using 5+-year-old technology. You are an internet luddite.

Flash is just glitz. Yes, anyone who puts information that you are searching for into a flash needs to be shot. But there's more to life than textual information. We have gone way past the days of Lynx and Gopher, which I remember fondly.

You, sir, resist progress. Here's a bad car metaphor (seems to be a slashdot thing): You want a corvette, but you are unwilling to do so beucase you don't want chrome. Instead, you drive an Amish horse cart.

And please.... "Untrusted 3rd party ap"? Yes, Al Queda is going to install something on your computer that kills you, but only if Sony has rootkitted you first. Please. Anything with 90% market penetration is de facto more trusted than most things.

But I bet you don't have a problem with open source software. And I bet you don't see how that makes you a hypcrite either.

So to summarize: You believe in your ideals to the point where you will cripple your own ability to work outside your own very-narrow confines.

Oh, and some levity: Maybe you should just use the JAWS screen-reader and only visit 508-complaint Flash sites. You'll get your text equivalent then.

Like a Democrat on voting day...

[FryingDutchman]

I choose not to register my opinion on this matter.

healthline.com

[Anonymous Coward]

glad to see http://www.healthline.com/ got one.

Re:I agree to an extent.

[pilkul]

It's progress to have pages that I can't bookmark or link for others, text I can't resize or cut-and-paste, and that my blind friend can't play in a screen reader? Flash is a step backward because it's not an open standard and it takes away control from the reader, when the web is all about empowering the reader.

Wonderbra? Big surprise

[wcrowe]

Why am I not surprised that the WonderBra page is one of the nominees?

Re:I agree to an extent.

[ClioCJS]

Flash *IS* readable with a screen-reader. I've spent the past 2 yrs developing training that is usually delivered in flash format and must pass govt section 508 requirements for assessibility and screenreading.

And: Your whole argument is a strawman. Flash is usually glitz, not content. Chrome on your bumpers. Unless you have a habit of bookmarking individual page elements rather than a page, your comment is completely non-applicable.

Furthermore, I already said earlier that anyone who puts valuable content inside of a Flash should generally be shot.

But not installing it out of tinfoilhatism? That's just looserish to me. I can view that latest YouTube video and show it to my friends (Though I'd much rather use my firefox extension to download the original video and play it fullscreen), and we will all laugh and have a good time. The tinfoilhatlinux person doesn't even have friends to show the video to, he's too busy flaming people for daring to install a new plugin.

You browse WITH IMAGES TURNED OFF?!

[ClioCJS]

Now, your slogan joke is hilarious.

However, you are in no position to complain about new web technology when you disable OLD web technology that is 15+ years old (images).

I think the fact that you disable images completely proves the gist of what I was said. You cripple your machine intentionally, then complain when other people use features you have disabled.

You are greatly raising smug levels. This is bad for the environment.

webby awards ruled by too much flash

[mcguyver]

I would sooner believe David Blaine is a magician than the Webby Awards are the Oscars of the Internet.

By the number of flash winners it's clear that the webby's are still out of touch with reality.

International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences

[kbob88]

Yup, after checking out their website, it appears that the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences exists solely for the purpose of running the Webby awards.

"Membership in The Academy is currently by invitation only and is limited to those individuals who have catalyzed great achievements on the Internet, demonstrated extraordinary talent in a traditional medium, or who possess in-depth knowledge of new media and comprehensive familiarity with a broad range of sites within a category."

So there's a buzzword filled load of crap that means: we invite our friends and people who we think are important.

I guess it's probably a good racket though. More credit to them for thinking of it and making it work. Just don't expect anyone to give a rat's ass about the awards.

$245 to enter too

[K-Man]

They apparently make their money via the old "Who's who" scam. They spam webmasters with "You have been nominated" messages to get them to pony up the entry fee.

There's a good description here.

Re:I agree to an extent.

[pilkul]

Okay, that it's supported by screenreaders is new to me. Still, looking it up I see extra markup is required to support it, whereas when you use standard HTML you pretty much get it automatically.

And: Your whole argument is a strawman. Flash is usually glitz, not content.

How's it a strawman when I see content inside Flash all the time? I don't really have any problems with Flash for some limited applications (e.g. web games), but any defense of Flash should begin by acknowledging that 80% of the time, Flash is misused.

I think "misused" is taking it a bit too far.

[ClioCJS]

And I still have yet to see a site where truly all the content lies within flash, only.

The screenreader stuff can work with NO additional markup. It depends on the type of text box you use in Flash. Obviously I'm a bit rusty or I'd specify precisely what that type is. Also, although JAWS ignores it, OBJECT tags can have ALT attributes. And I still have yet to meet any of these blind friends people keep claiming to have :) But we brought a blind guy into work to test some of our flash stuff. It was interesting watching him eat a strawberry.

Not necessarily

[SIGBUS]

Try finding a native AMD64 Flash plugin.

No porn on the web

[slashedmydot]

I guess they think porn is not important enough to make a category about. Not even the soft stuff like 'erotica'...

Very stange considering that porn is largely responible for the growth of the web.

Uh... What?

[ClioCJS]

So what, Flash made it so 32-bit applications don't work on 64-bit systems?

I think not.

Either I am missing your point (quite likely), or your posting was by far the most pitiful of the lot.

Re:Uh... What?

[/dev/trash]

Why buy an 64 bit machine when there are no apps that use it?

A.D.D.

[ClioCJS]

So now people can't read text without being distracted by an image? Are you in need of some ritalin? (Glad you thought the joke was cute, but I stole it.)

Re:A.D.D.

[ClioCJS]

I hope you're not implying that you can't cut-and-paste text from a flash movie, because I have done so about 50 times in the past week.

I've only tried 2 of those so far...

[ClioCJS]

One had a flash intro page, which pop-up'ed an HTML page when you used it(totousa). That's evil, and the page is really lame. But all that's needed to view this site without flash is ONE LINK to the HTML version. This is a reason to install flash, not a reason not to install flash.

NPGMusicClub clearly worked in HTML, I could mouseover the image placeholders as they loaded, clearly indicating HTML image links, not flash. There were flash elements. Not installing flash would certainly ugly it up. This is still, to me, no reason not to install flash, and no reason for the authors to not use flash. The site has a link to bypass the flash and the site itself is not flash. That's like complaining that a porn site has a welcome page with an image on it, and you only want textual porn.

BigFatInstitute is an abomination. I still don't see this as a reason not to install flash. This is an example of idiocy at it's finest, though. But still -- any person who wants to use his computer to go to thie site can do so, unless they are some zealot who insists on using an operating system that cannot support this. Ooooh "untrusted code"! Oh no!!@!@!@

Webby Schmebby...they missed some great sites

[CitznFish]

How could Disney.com and FamilyFun.com not even be nominated?

Weak weak weak

You say tomato, I say toma--hmm... this joke doesn

[ClioCJS]

't work so well in writing.
Anyway...

Anyway, I don't see how "it works in javascript" is a good response. We weren't talking about javascript. My answer was accurate, but I guess one can never be too precise (accuracy vs precision) these days. I should have named every technology used. Or perhaps, you are making an argument against javascript too? My god, are abacuses and sextants and slide rules somehow involved too? :)

If you're arguing against javascript, you've really lost me now (not that you should care... well... *I* think you should:)). If 99% of the world can do something and your operating systems don't support that -- that is a big, big, big, big weakness on their part. Computers need to be albe to use new technologies as they come out, not 10 years later.

(I'm still aching over the 2000 experience of learning that Quake1 wont support a SoundBlaster original in RedHat 6.2/whatever-at-the-time. I mean... that's like... the original sound card. </tangent>)

I worked with markup code in 1993, I don't know when HTML technically came out but at the time no-one knew what HTML was. When HTML came along, it was just like "oh, another one of these". Sorry, another tangent.

Your use of the word "history" is something noteable to me. I use windows primarily for historical reasons myself. I grew up on DOS. I had my own command-line environment of various scripts & binaries on my first 20M harddrive, and that folder still exists today as the first folder in my %PATH (translation: $PATH) (hehe) and gets used extensively. When cygwin came along it pretty much did everything that I used my unix shell accounts for natively on my own machine, and I found myself no longer using ssh anymore. Every day, I run scripts that write scripts that then run. I use tab-filename completion every few minutes. I have automatic replications of important harddrive repositories (and 3 terabytes of space across 4 computers). I grep constantly. I have TV-out and have used a 36-inch TV as my primary screen for awhile now (Warrantee clock says it's been on over 30,000 hrs since 8/1999 which is rather insane if you work the math out.) I haven't used a cd player in 5 yrs. My music is broadcast on FM radio throughout my house and my computer can also turn off lights. I've used TV-out for 11 years.

And when my friends are over sometimes it's nice to show them an ugly website on a 36-inch TV connected to a 100wx5+16'sub soundsystem with an optical digital cable (no ground loop buzz)...

But hey... maybe I'm not going down the right path, but generally I don't meet people who use their stuff as... efficiently(?)... as I do.

There's something wrong here...

[fullback]

Am I the only one who finds it ironic that some of the websites considered to be the greatest in the world don't work using the most popular browser (IE) with security set at what it should be to reduce the greatest security threats of the internet - no scripting and no ActiveX?

My favourite home page

[duplo]

about:blank

Re:we-huh?

[ErroneousBee]

Its an award for the most Anglophone, USA-centric, flash ridden, over hyped websites that the judges can find in thier bookmarks from last years award nominations.

Re:I agree to an extent.

[nahdude812]

I agree with you wholeheartedly regarding the abuses of Flash; rarely is it used for its real purposes. Adobcromedia in fact is actually encouraging this abuse of Flash by striving to replace HTML with Flex (roughly, data driven dynamically generated Flash) for their contribution to Web 2.0. In the next 2-3 years, they expect to abandon support for ColdFusion, their server-side HTML engine, in favor of Flex, according to our Adobe sales rep.

However, that does not make it a bad technology, just a misused technology. Flex in fact, as well as regular Flash, has very real uses that are served by no other technologies.

That does make it a straw man argument, because you focus on misuses of a technology, declaring the technology as a whole to be bad as a result. Cars kill people, cars have even been used to intentionally kill people, but that doesn't make cars bad (whether they are bad or not should include this in its discussion, but the argument cannot be based solely on this fact).

Disclaimer: I do know ColdFusion, Flash, and Flex -- all three quite well in fact -- but my real love is PHP; see the link in my signature, I'm the first name in that copyright.

Re:we-huh?

[FhnuZoag]

It's not that USA-centric. The BBC and the Guardian won best News, and best Newspaper respectively.

You, sir, are a non-functional web user.

[ClioCJS]

I load flash in multiple tabs all the time, and my machine is only 900mHz. Maybe if you used an operating system that used your hardware more efficiently, you wouldn't have this problem?

Security? Please. Don't let the flash app get me! I lost my life's work due to flash! Flash killed my parents!

Why?

[ClioCJS]

For the extra 32 bits, you insensitive clod!

I would say, if I had to buy another machine this year, it would be nice to have an architecture that the operating systems of 2009 would run on.

Not that this has anything to do with the parent conversation (that I can ascertain).

Re:Why?

[/dev/trash]

so let's get a 64 bit
flash library

Use Stumble Upon for real site diversity

[Tiger4]

I've installed the Stumble Upon extension for Firefox, and it has worked out to be a great way to find new and different and GOOD things on the web. Lots of eyes with lots of opinions slowly browsing the Web, giving everything thumbs up or thumbs down. If a site floats to the top, it has some real value worth seeing.

Ummm mm Mm mmmmm. .....

[ClioCJS]

OK?