Army-issued veterans site

Founded by Chuck Reickoff, author of the fantastic "Chasing Ghosts, based on his experience as an American occupier of Iraq just after the fall of Baghdad, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America organization aims to help soldiers adjust to life back in the world, educating them on their benefits and lobbying Congress on their behalf on issues like the GI Bill.

Upon first impression, one may think this site is Army-commissioned, but it's an independent organization. The color palette - green, tan and gold - is appropriate for the site, but it risks the aforementioned confusion.

The site does well on the CRAP test.

Contrast: The site uses its color palette effectively to clearly indicate different elements and sections. The layout is designed to look somewhat like an open folder, as if the viewer was privy to a military brief. The green main nav bar and links are easy to find and recognize. 

Repetition: The site is consistent with its navigation and content, and from page to page, viewers should have no problem finding elements.

Alignment: The page tends to skew to the right, with a secondary nav bar in the right division. The site uses multimedia elements well, and nearly every page has a dominant video or photo image. 

Proximity: Great padding throughout. Clean design.

Bad website...well, sort of

How ironic. My family moved to Clinton Township last summer and this is my first time visiting the city's website because of a class assignment. If I were a newcomer to the website with no knowledge of web design, I would think the page was fine.

However, that's not the case now.

There are some positives about it. The site is well organized, no crazy color scheme (the blue, white and gray fits the mood of the site), no ridiculous icons and navigation is there for everyone to see.

Now on to the negatives.

The first thing I noticed was the homepage failed to provide a blurb, telling you what website's purpose. I guess they assumed the banner info was enough. You figure it out. Another noticeable thing was the primary navigation bar. It irked me because when I went over any of the links, a list of other links would appear. There's just too much information for that and it makes everything looks cluttered.

For example, when you drag the mouse over the "Welcome" bar, only one link appears. It's just not necessary. A small, yet significant observation were the divs, particularly on the right side were longer than others. In regards to the navigation again, it can become confusing because if you click on a link, you have no way of getting back to the homepage and the primary navigation completely changes. The website also has important information below the scroll and when I dragged my mouse over the links or tried to click on them, the color remained the same. One of my pet peeves are advertisements randomly on the side of websites and this one succeeded in doing this. There are ads on both sides of the site.

Overall, the website is not a horrific one. Yet, there is too much going on in terms of information all over the place and appearing to cluttered. It could use some multimedia elements to make the site more lively (maybe interviews with residents for example). They're off to a good start, but there's always room for improvement.

Sprint: Plug into Now.

The purpose of this Web site is to... Well, it's hard to say, right? That's the main reason I chose it. No doubt people who stumble upon the site will ooh and aah at the sleekness of the product. After all, it's from Sprint. However, despite the beauty of it, this site was listed as one of the worst Web sites of 2008 on WebPagesThatSuck.com, and here are some reasons why, provided by myself and Vincent Flanders. (Click to see what he had to say about it via YouTube.)

For one thing, the navigation is unfriendly at best. The main site is cluttered with widgets that do not fit on smaller screens (definitely not 955 x 600 pixels). Worse is that in order to get to the widget on the bottom left, you have to use your mouse and shimmy yourself over there. Why not make life easy for people and allow them to scroll? If you go to another window or tab, the site automatically scrolls to the bottom right for you (so when you go back, you have to manually shimmy yourself back to the top left for the semi-relevant information). I don't really care about how useless the widgets are because that decision was clearly intentional, but the most important (if not only) important element on the page is practically invisible in the mess of pointless information.

Once you finally realize the only effective link is the "Take it to go with Mobile Broadband" button, our big question ("What is this?"), is finally answered on the new page, which features the sky view of a city. Little speech bubbles pop up randomly with equally random messages. When you roll over certain locations, bubbles follow you around, but still some popups are random, and the first time I was on the site I spent a bit too much time trying to figure out whether I was having a Beautiful-Mind moment or not. Again, it takes a lot of concentration to not focus on the city and actually read the blurb on the left, which vaguely defines the product and finally gives you a link to a purchasing page (which is a clear and concise subpage of Sprint - thank goodness!)

It's not that I don't think the two pages and their ideas are cool - I can picture plenty of people having fun "in the moment". But, as Flanders notes, the "metaphor navigation" is distressing. The creator obviously knows Flash, but as we have discussed in class, "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should." Actually, all the important elements are there, but they are overpowered by the widgets on the first page, and the popups on the second. Never at any moment in time do I get a concrete sense of what the product is, so never do I want to purchase the product - which I still don't fully understand. Maybe a Sprint user would know better?

The site definitely has redeeming qualities. It's a mess, but at least it doesn't give you seizures. And the idea of always knowing what's going on at any second of the day? That's always been a hot topic. I'm sure males respond positively to the sexual voiceover. I definitely got a good laugh out of it when she said, "Feel free to touch it." Yep, that's what she said!

If the purpose is only to entertain, then thank you Sprint, you have succeeded. It is a very pretty site, and you let me play pong on a 50 x 50 sized widget. However, I think Sprint's goal is to sell me something, and based on the Web site alone, I am not buying.

Sarasota-Tampa Express

This website hits pretty much all of the high points of a bad website in my opinion.

First there is the music that starts as soon as the page loads, and doesn't have an off button. Its different on every page and I can't think of a single reason that it would be necessary.

Second, as soon as you move your mouse  the words start following you. In order to ensure that you can read the text you must remember place the mouse at the header when you've finished clicking. Randomly, you loose the mouse trail on some pages while it continues on others.

The rainbow flashing "New" indicators are especially distracting as you try and figure out what service this site is offering.

There are two types of navigation, the buttons that run down the left side, and another set of buttons the run across the bottom. They have the same links except for the addition of "Photos" at the bottom.

The look of the buttons and page layout are consistent for some of the site. However, when you look at "Tampa Airport" and "Contact Us" pages its entirely different.

Also on the "Tampa Airport" page, it seems they have taken the graphic of the airport straight off the airport's page.  Sure they credit it, but clicking on it automatically takes you to the airport page in the same window. 

The "Maps" link also doesn't take you to a page with maps. I can't tell if that is  on purpose or if their maps just don't load. 

In their defense however, it is easy to navigate and prices, schedules and contact info is easy to find.

Bad Site -- New York Film Academy

As bland as our own school website might be, at least it doesn't look like a cheap hooker on a street corner. Fortunately, this look was achieved by the website of the New York Film Academy, School of Film & Acting.

Lets just start with the obvious: the color palette is HORRIBLE. It does nothing but improve the cheapness that is emanated from the fonts, blinking words, and the low quality pictures found in certain places on the site. Um, did you know that Miss Universe 2008 went to school here? Um, did you know that NYFA couldn't get a high quality picture of their own student?

The prestige of this school is lost on me. I use the word prestige with reserve because the website seems like something more reserved for a rip-off, fake school, than some college that produced..well, no one all that important. Especially for a school claiming to be "one of the most prominent fixtures of film education in the world." Diane Neal who played Case Novak on Law & Order: SVU is about the most popular alumni they have on their webste. Oh, and Lonelygirl15, Jessica Rose. Classy. On the plus side, it's pretty easy to find most of the information you may look for on a school website, such as tuition, or available programs.

Bad color scheme, some videos that start automatically, cheap looks, and bad photoes equal bad website.

Bad Site--Restaurant Guide Atlanta

The Restaurant Guide Atlanta site is impressive with its 12,000 restaurant listings, but it's overwhelming use of every space and bright colors make you think you're looking at a spam advertisement.

Within the home page, the problems are massive. There are two animated objects moving at the same time at different places on the screen, the links and nav bars are buried within the text and the page is overloaded with info.

Some other major problems include the banner going to different home pages, each additional page has a different layout and a tacky, inconsistent color palette.

The site has lots of information, but the clutter makes it impossible to read. It is a horrible site to serve as a guide and would easily confuse any tourist.

Event Site -- Common Ground Festival

I don't know how many of you have been, but the Common Ground Festival is a big deal in Lansing during the hot summer month of July.

The festival is usually a combination of local bands and a couple of high profile acts that come annually. The festival isn't scheduled until July 6th - 12th this year, so some of the information on the website is lacking, but the design is nice.

To reference acts that have been at Common Ground, there is a built in playlist of music from past performers. The color palatte is simple primary red and blue on a mostly white page. There is a background picture that is mostly covered by the center scroll, and a line of ads down the left side of the scroll also. The ads on the left also serve as a secondary navigation of sorts, pointing visitors to social networking pages for the festival on places such as Myspace and Facebook.

The main navigation bar is forefront and apparent, in red and white, with very easy to read text and no drop down menus. The utility navigation is in the footer, but there is also a link home and to a contact page at the very top above the main navigation bar. The header "Common Ground" is also a link home.

From what I can tell, it would be very easy to find information for who may be performing, when, even though that information is not currently available. Ticket prices on the other hand, can be seen and easily deiphered.

Overall, I think the site does it's job of giving out information for the next festival, being easy to navigate and inform, and it keeps a visitor's attention.