I’ve been doing a lot of work on my site lately, and that leads to support boards and helping others with their questions/problems. In doing so, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend…
/rant on
I don’t know what to call it. But it looks like hell. It’s a webpage consisting of a huge image covering about 75% of the screen (and I’m at 1280×1024), with little blocks of text positioned haphazardly around it. Very little content, just one big honking image, presumably of the owner’s favorite celebrity/ies. Maybe “fanblob” would fit the bill. A blob of nothing smeared on the web. Of course, on at least the last few I saw, after noticing the trend, had nothing to identify the people in the image, so “fan” might not belong there. Blob, then… just a blob.
Bad coding seems to be a common theme, too. These kids share odd little hacks that are intended to add ‘cool’ features, and rarely work. The likely reason is the original site was badly hacked, and after a few generations of their work being spread about and emulated, the result is something that won’t work, or worse, destroys the parts that did work. That’s usually when I get the pleasure of seeing them… they’ve asked for help, and I take a look to see if I can help. Generally, the best advice I can give is “start over”.
Kids, can you please make the effort of learning a little bit about pageflow, readability, and design while you thrash about on the web? Simply copying a format from your buddy doesn’t mean you’re creating something worth looking at. It looks like ass.
Yeah, yeah, my site may not be the most visually attractive out there, but at least I’ve taken the time to learn about standards (and follow them), optimizations (and implement them), and I can happily say that while I have been inspired by a number of sites, I’ve taken the time to create my own, and recreate it when it became apparent that my layout and design plans needed improvement.
meh.
There’s plenty if garbage strewn about the web. Why generate more? Worse yet, why copy someone else’s garbage?
/rant off