May 7, 2011 2 replies

The ugliest websites in the world

CSS Hell

Welcome to hell.

Still on the subject of the dark side of the web: I found a contest for the ugliest website held last June. The winner, which turned out to be mytastynuts.com, won a free redesign package worth $1800. Now this could have been a little more buzzworthy if the contest and company site itself looked like there had been thought put into the design. Heck, if you ask me, the current mytastynuts.com looks better, and don’t really have the right to be doing redesigns.

Of course, there’s really no harm in entering a contest where a free redesign is up for grabs—even if it ends up being not much of an upgrade at all—but that’s the problem with web design: the threshold’s too easy to cross.

The ugliest website contest would also have gone viral if the site were designed in the ugliest manner possible. Something that looks like this (without looking like they’re ripping you off). But that’s the other problem with web design: not everybody “gets” good design.

  1. Many have high tolerance for badly designed sites and bad design in general. Put bluntly, they wouldn’t know if something looks ugly even if it hit them in the face. Sometimes design can depend on a person’s instinct and taste, but it can also suck
  2. Combine that with “it’s just a lowly website”, not something cooler like architecture, fashion, or an ad campaign, and it’s a steep, uphill battle.
  3. And to top it all off, there’s the thin line between design and decoration, which is the absence of purpose and real content. A website, more than any other designed entity, is nothing without content and function.

Don’t be such a downer

Okay enough with the pessimism. How do we get rid of said problems? Eliminate ignorance, for starters. Buckets of inspiration from CSS galleries and image bookmarking sites are always good to have, but it’s also important to know exactly what we should avoid.

I recommend grabbing some eyedrops before clicking any of the links below:

The next step is figuring out why said sites are on the list. But that’s for another (ugly) day.

October 26, 2009 say something

XKCD says goodbye Geocities, hello ’90s web design

XKCD's tribute to Geocities: nineties web design

To commemorate the closing of internet dinosaur and free web hosting service Geocities today, October 26, geeky web comic XKCD “redesigned” its site to match the horrible aesthetic (or lack thereof) rampant during the ’90s. Low-fi images (including the requisite “under construction” sign), web-safe colors, <table>s, <blink>, <marquee>, a hit counter, and a “best viewed in Netscape Navigator” disclaimer—it’s all in there. I think the only thing missing is an actual comic about Geocities itself.

Is it safe to say we are finally rid of those horrible-looking and horribly-functioning things now that Geocities is gone? We will always have that side of the spectrum. But it’s a good reminder of how far we’ve come:

  1. IE6 is now the most outdated browser instead of the most modern. (That doesn’t make its continued existence a good thing though.)
  2. If you disable images and stylesheets, webpages will make sense.
  3. Descriptive hyperlinks matter (mostly to curry favor with Google, but still).
  4. Despite Yahoo!’s terrifying propensity to run its acquisitions to the ground (worried about Flickr and Delicious yet?), it’s easier and cheaper than ever to run your own website.

Still, the timeless adage remains: back up and be prepared! You never know when life will go Geocities on you.

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