Farm Accident Digest
Site HomeFebruary 18th, 2005
No Point. Just Trying To Get Going Again
Good page design can bring in some viewership, but, to use obviousness for the appearance of insight, readership requires content of some sort. That's why some hideously designed sites can still manage to be popular. Back a few years ago, Something Awful had one of the worst nested table designs seen by mortal man. It would kill any old Netscape browser, Opera would send out "Why are you doing this to me?" errors and even IE, which has always taken a casual approach to HTML, would sometimes churn a bit. Any time a new browser came out, first thing we would do is give it the Something Awful Table Test (as I worked in web applications at the time, this actually fell under the job in a way).But the king of eyescreamingly bad design, from color, font size, font choice was always Ain't It Cool -- or as I call it "Ain't I A Big, Fat Fucking Tool", but that's because I'm clever and you are not. There was nothing like trying to parse prose thicker even than the fingers that typed it all presented in oversized (appropriately colored) purple text in all caps. Add it to the odd compulsion list that I still visit that site. Or call it morbid fascination.
Anyway, this all came to mind because AIABFFT is going through a re-design. Believe it or not, that's a massive improvement. Though they should count themselves lucky that the US is not part of Kyoto as use of exclamation marks is one of the major causes of warming, and their use of them could burn a hole through James Wolcott's heart.
Posted By Emily on Feb 18th, 2005 at 9:23am What? You don't like big blocks of baby-shit brown highlighting all the article links? And here that was the one thing I was thinking about incorporating over here. Posted By fad on Feb 18th, 2005 at 9:25am I like them in the sense that they really give a great visually poetic feeling of the content of the site. Posted By Emily on Feb 18th, 2005 at 9:50am Hmmm, maybe I should incoporate them here anyway, then. Posted By fad on Feb 18th, 2005 at 9:59am Copy cat. Always imitating the cool people. Posted By Emily on Feb 18th, 2005 at 10:08am I've never claimed to be original, just a sad hack leeching off the babyshit brown genius of others. Posted By fad on Feb 18th, 2005 at 10:11am Clearly. Please pass the sick bag. Posted By Emily on Feb 18th, 2005 at 10:39am Yet more of my unappreciated art. Just you wait. My shit is going to be so in demand after I die in a couple years. You'll be sorry you were a scoffer. Posted By fad on Feb 18th, 2005 at 10:41am That's a risk I'm willing to take. Posted By Emily on Feb 18th, 2005 at 11:06am Yeah, figured you would. Posted By fad on Feb 18th, 2005 at 12:05pm
AICN is still ugly. AND THEY STILL SHOUT!!!!