The Bad Sites

Design Charts Designcharts.com: I do not know where to start with this one. Minor things that got checked off include extensive use of hard-to-read capitalized text, a lack of a site map, no clear link back to the home page, and the (X)HTML does not validate. This site is an automatic fail because it did fail at least one of the mortal sins (three actually). The most notable is that the site is entirely designed in Flash. This offers a serious accessibility problem for those not equipped with flash or those who have to rely on screen readers (such as the visually impaired). Also, search engines do not like flash-only sites. In addition, I could not easily find contact information. Lastly, the Flash interface forces us to use a Flash scrollbar that is hard to use instead of the normal one on the browser.

Jesus Is Savior: This is a page I had stumbled upon while doing research on web design. It gets an automatic fail because it is an overload of information packed onto one page. The scrollbar is literally nanometers long, so there is a nice long scroll for the user (I'd clear your day if you want to see it all). I was able to count six different text/link colours and a repeating background image is used and the list of minor violations is far too long to list. Just as a side note, see this page of theirs if you ever wondered what "Hell" is like; got a small chuckle out of it. If you do decide to visit and read this site, be cautious as there may be a few shocking images.

Hartnell: This is a case of navigational soup! The entire top half of the page is composed of a navigation system that is a sea of text links and strange roll-over effects using Javascript (in viewing the source, it looked like the amount of script used could fill a book). I had to give this site a fail because the navigation is dependent upon Javascript. I viewed the site with scripting off and it merely showed the menu with everything visible (it still works, but it causes the site to get very close to "information overload"). In addition the colour of the text on the menu bars is a white on a brownish background (severe contrast issue). A colour-blind person such as myself had to ask a friend for help in viewing this site.