Web Designs: Good Versus Bad

Good Web Design Bad Web Design

http://www.google.com/tenthbirthday/#start

Googles Tenth Birthday picture

I reviewed the web site called Google's Tenth Birthday, and it impresses me with a professional web design with many attractive and fun elements to navigate:

http://www.burgersfriesandcherrypies.com

Burgers Fries and Cherry pies web site

In contrast, the web site Burgers Fries and Cherry Pies is one of the contenders for the 10 worst web designs of 2008 (according to Web Pages that Suck). My review of the site indicates the following flaws:

Text

  • The background does not interfere with the readability of the text (plain white)
  • The text is easy to read, not too big or small.
  • Good hierarchy.
  • Columns are narrower than a book, making easy to read.

Links

  • Link colors coordinate with the page
  • Links are underlined for clarity.

Graphics

  • There are no big dorky buttons or illustrations.
  • Most graphics have an alt label.
  • Every graphic link has a matching text link (in this case, they are grouped together).

Animation

  • Clever animations on the timeline buttons, and when opening links.
  • Not obnoxious: the animations do not blink or repeat.

Junk

  • There is no junk or clutter.

Navigation

  • Navigation is very clear and easy to use.
  • Navigation links give clues to their precense as they are underlined.
  • The navigation works well to reflect the Google ten year timeline idea.
  • Viewer is allowed to chose between seeing timeline organized graphically with interactive animation, or as plain text.

General design

  • Clean looking pages with immediate visual impact
  • Good use of graphic elements to break up large areas of text.
  • Pages in the site all look like they belong to the Google family, and the design elements carry successfully throughout.

Text

  • In the background of the left navigation bar, the green interferes with the readability of black and red text.
  • In the middle sections the text becomes small and hard to read.
  • Text is fuzzy in the scanned bitmapped images.

Links

  • Link colors do not coordinate with the page. (bright red on bright green).
  • Links are not underlined for clarity.

Graphics

  • The graphics do NOT have alt labels.
  • Pages take forever to load due to large graphic files.
  • Meaningless banner graphic of yellow semi-circles.

Animation

  • None to discuss.

Junk

  • Cluttered home page - too much text with no introduction or "splash" on the home page.
  • Overly large yellow stars advertising burger rates.

Navigation

  • The navigation links were hard to find because they were not underlined.
  • Items I thought should navigate to links do not do anything (i.e. the text at top looks like it should be a navigation menu : "Dine In · Pick Up · Drive Through · Catering")

General design

  • Page design does not fit a standard browser (640x480 pixels).
  • No focal point on page.
  • Poor planning on color palette.
  • A confusing mixture of text styles.

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