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Best & Worst
These are some pages dealing with free speech issues that I've looked at
lately.
Worst site I didn't expect much from: Current Works for Freedom,
http://www.millennium-cafe.com/~zhezhe/current_works/ Okay, picking on a
personal site is shooting fish in a barrel. But this is truly awful.
"Artsy" neon pink-on-black design, annoying animations, and links that run
off the edge of my screen on my monitor at home. This didn't need to be.
Worst site that should know better: ACLU On-line, http://www.aclu.org.
Great content. Awful design. The main page is long, cluttered and
confusing to navigate. To the left, a bunch of icons. To the right, a
bunch of buttons. Why do some pages get icons, and some buttons? You
can't tell by looking. The page layout doesn't stay consistent throughout
the site, but it doesn't vary systematically to show where pages fit in
the site's structure; it just varies. Both problems make it difficult to
make sense of the site's structure. And while some scrolling is fine with
me, this site has far too many pages that require you to scroll down
several screens just to be able to tell what information's actually on
that page. Instead of a site map that actually reveals the site's
stucture, the site features a "site index" that's just a long, long list
of links to the site's pages. There's a lot of useful information here,
but it could be presented so much better, and isn't.
Much better design, in my opinion: Peacefire Youth Alliance Against
Internet Censorship, http://www.peacefire.org. Nicely done, especially
for a student-designed and mainly student-maintained site. It's clear
from the main page what's here and where it is. The site mainly uses text
links, but they're organized appropriately and less distracting than
dozens of icons would be. Dividing the page into columns lets navigation,
news, and a description of the site's purpose share the top of the page
well. And the page design stays consistent throughout the site.
--Amy Griswold