[thelist] [OT] Terrible Websites

[Jackson Yee]

----- Original Message -----
From: <Jonathan_A_McPherson at rl.gov>
To: <thelist at lists.evolt.org>
Sent: Monday, July 29, 2002 17:43
Subject: RE: [thelist] [OT] Terrible Websites


> Someone needs to invent a scoring system for those things...
>
> - Using a splash page ..
>   - with lousy JPEG artifacts:  10 points
>   - that downloads very slowly:  5 points
> - Using a right-click disabler script
>   - that doesn't do a thing about "View-Source":
>                                 35 points
> - Using font tags:              15 points
>   - ... next to semantic tags:   5 points
>   - on every other word:        20 points
>   - with dizzying colors:       10 points
> - Being so IE-only that Mozilla won't load it:
>                                 15 points
> - Opening new windows
>   - without warning user:        5 points
>   - at random:                  10 points
> - Gratuitous overuse of DHTML menus:
>                                 20 points
>   - without alternate nav:      10 points
> - Non-search-engine-friendly URLS:
>                                 20 points
> - "Fixed" L-shaped navigation:  10 points
>   - with jerky DHTML trying to keep it in place:
>                                 40 points
> - Bloated JavaScript
>   - that makes up >50% of page download time:
>                                 20 points
> - Amateurish and oversized graphics:
>                                 15 points
>
> Hmmmm... Perhaps this isn't so OT afterall. (-:

Jonathon, that was a *hilarious* listing.  I'd like to add

Requires javascript for navigation:        30pts
Uses fixed point fonts:                    10pts
  - Which are too small to read on Macs:   20pts
Page ad/content size ratio
  - Above 0.5                              10pts
  - Above 1                                20pts
  - Above 1.5                              40pts
Requires horizontal scrolling at
  - 640x480                                10pts
  - 800x600                                20pts
  - 1024x768                               40pts

It would be quite difficult to write a program which could analyze a website
and output a scorecard for what you've listed above, but I'd be quite
interested in what the correlation is between most frequently visited sites
within a category and the sites' scores on your list.  Does usability really
make a dramatic difference in today's market when it comes to profits, or are
those 5-15% of people who use Netscape 4.x, have JavaScript disabled, or
simply don't belong to the mainstream "IE user on Windows" group not worth the
amount of time spent on making the site accessible to them?  Many companies
seem to be taking the latter approach.

Regards,
Jackson Yee
jyee at vt.edu
http://www.jacksonyee.com/