Filed under: Fugly Friday
Fugly Friday: three wellsprings of ugly
Last week I covered RogerART, but this week I'm going to look at a great source of ugly sites. Three sources, in fact. The first is known by millions of people: Fark. Yes, I picked Fark because it has, traditionally, carried a lot of links to local news sites or personal sites. And let's be honest: most local affiliate sites (like your local ABC/NBC/CBS TV station's site) look like crap. They have been getting better in the past couple of years (competition breeds UI upgrades, apparently), but I still think the trend to bland, generic pages isn't anything to crow about. Thank you, Fark, for the years of fugliness. I won't mention the horrid Photoshop atrocities you'll find there, mostly because there's a certain folk art aspect to those hilarious GIFs...
Speaking of fugly imagery, the other two sites are jumping off points for even more fugly spelunking: Worst of the Web and Jim Westergren's list of "Worst Web Design Ever." Worst of the Web has archives going all the way back to 1996, but many of the sites they reviewed are either gone or upgraded -- you'll have to cross check with the Internet Archives to see the real fugs there. But Jim's list is pure comedy gold (RogerArt is on there, for example). The sites he features are a mishmash of personal sites and just plain crazy design disasters. Like the MIA site, which I'm not sure, but I think that atrocity is actually on purpose.
Do you know of any other lists of fugly sites? I remember one about 7 years ago that pointed to this guy, but I can't find it now.
Sociable
With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet.
They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...
