Learn To Design Or GTFO
I read this article about web design screw ups Sindhu linked to which reminded me that I too had a few things to say on the topic.
When we had lab exercises for designing web pages and basic forms (in VB) in my computer science engineering course, I noticed that most of my classmates couldn’t come up with anything acceptable. They had absolutely no eye for colour and their choice of layout elements was just retarded.
Colours That Blind
A few of them love bright pink and yellow colours and faithfully use them as web page backgrounds. A few even go to the extent of using them for command button backgrounds! When I suggested that they change to a colour that didn’t leave afterimages when I looked away they were quite surprised and asked why I didn’t like their pretty colours.
Marquees - The Bane of the Internet
Most all of them are completely fascinated by marquees. They cannot rest unless there are no less than four horizontal and vertical marquees running all over the screen. It does not help that the web page of the University we are affiliated to uses a marquee to display the main news. (You have to wait for the marquee to slowly scroll to read the entire news and if you miss an item you have to wait for it to scroll all over again. Learn to design, losers!) If you add a marquee in a web page, you are a complete idiot who should not be allowed near a computer.
Headers
WordArt rainbow coloured text is the worst choice you can make for any header, yet people love them to death. This is like a caveman being introduced to the television and being impressed by all the colours even if he does not understand what’s going on.
Browser Specific Designs
There are some morons who believe that Internet Explorer is a good browser simply because they haven’t used anything else. These fellows add a line saying that the site is best viewed at 800 x 600 and with IE 5.5. All of us can laugh at these fools since we stopped using 800 x 600 in 1997 and IE 5.5 is just unusable.
There is a lot more in that article that you should know to avoid making a fool of yourself so go read it and maybe you can bring your site or blog from the ’90s to the year 2008.
Rachel says:
Magesh, is well for known for this color comedy. His background will be mostly in yellow or green
I feel white is always the best color for any page. Obviously marquees are really annoying to read.
Posted on May 21st, 2008 at 5:22 am
Selerines says:
@Marc : To do these type of things in a better way “Good innovative thinking” is needed, which is lacking here…. While doing lab exercises most of the students are cared about their marks and internals and never showed the interest on these type of things except few. While this mentality exists here, it is not fair to expect a good work from students….
Posted on May 21st, 2008 at 7:09 am
Rachel says:
@ Selerines
All human will posses ‘Thinking’, but only very few go for “good innovative thinking” in these kinda things.
Posted on May 21st, 2008 at 9:00 am
Marc Z says:
Regardless of whether they really care what kind of idiot sets a bright colour as a background colour?
Posted on May 21st, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Rachel says:
@Marc
Some people think that dark color are meant for attractiveness. So they go for dark colors thinking it would look nice and offcourse too bright.
Posted on May 21st, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Rachel says:
Sorry, not dark but bright colors. But even some dark colors sucks while kept as background color for a web page.
Posted on May 21st, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Selerines says:
@Marc : Regardless of whether they really care what kind of idiot sets a bright colour as a background colour?
The answer is there in your question itself….
Posted on May 21st, 2008 at 8:59 pm
George says:
Then there’s me who has everything too dark to read. There’s a good reason they didn’t hire me to paint the Sistine.
Of course, at least the code is clean
Posted on May 23rd, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Karthik says:
@Marc,
On the ‘bright’ side, look at the amount of damage these people are causing to college montiors. It’s well worth it.
Posted on May 23rd, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Sundar says:
This is an absolutely crappy post purely because you forgot your usual rant on embedded videos. Rewrite this and call me.
Posted on May 24th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Marc Z says:
Monitors are not damaged any more by colours, only our eyes.
Embedded videos are not usually part of the design. Flash videos are and I forgot about them.
Posted on May 27th, 2008 at 12:19 pm