28 April 2012

Salon & The Unviewable Web

While some sites have put thought into clean, simple, readability, others are going over-the-top bonkers in the opposite direction. Floating banners and footers that obscure text and mess up scrolling. Ads that bounce text and layout around, shifting the content like a crappy online puzzle game while you wait for things to settle enough to start reading, right after the headache and vertigo clear.

Salon had been bad before but their recent redesign makes it even worse. Way to go, Salon design team! Here's a recent article. As if the riot of colors, animations, floating crap, accidental strikeout lines weren't bad enough, notice what's not on the page? That's right, content! An entire content-free page. I have to scroll a full page just to get to any content. And when I do, the floating nonsense screws even that up. Horrible stuff, Salon, truly stupendously awful.


3 comments:

JustJoeP said...

Perhaps the Salon layout editors really really like the movie Idiocracy, and are trying to emulate it? Looks familiar (link here)

pyker said...

Funny, you might be right.

zim said...

egads!

yes, i hate those footer popups that look like they can be dismissed, but then they animate into a position where they kind of "peeking up". like a 4 year old who thinks you're about to start playing again.