Category: Fugly Friday

The thing about technology is that it isn't inherently good or bad, it's how we choose to use it that makes it so. This has been true since the first humans picked up a bone and fashioned a hammer. Some used it to build, and others to kill. So it is with the web -- except the killing part, maybe. We've seen some great stuff like Google's search engine, Delicious bookmarks and Pandora's music ...

Unfortunately the stout folks at Guinness don't have a "World's Worst Website" category (best I could find was the worst mouse plague, which I assume happens frequently in schools). Fear not, as one intrepid designer has endeavored to show by way of example; I give you the "World's Worst Website," and oh boy, does it deliver. Pretty much every web design sin in the book is covered, from hosting ...

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 ...

I would be remiss in continuing this series without a stop at RogerART.com -- a throwback on the web in so many ways. Run by Earth Citizen Roger Drowne, the site is all text and GIF's, they way HTML 1.0 intended. Roger's message is pure, I'll give him that. He revels in being consistently lumped into the "worst" website category, which I think is terrific. Roger has some painting ability with ...

We love customization around here. Computers would be a sad, sterile place without being able to alter, to any degree, your workspace. Applications often provide "skins" for various reasons (usually just for fun). But the skins that provide a cool theme can also turn a workspace ugly in a hurry. In this case beauty is often in the eye of the beholder. Just as with clothes, there are plenty of ...

Each Friday we take a look at the weird, bad and just plain fugly interfaces for desktop, mobile and web apps.. Welcome to Fugly Friday After going through the submissions last week it struck me how so many educational portals or tools are not given the design love they deserve. Shouldn't there be a program where designers can volunteer their time to spruce up edu sites of all kinds? Maybe not ...

According to a statistic I just made up, almost half of all interfaces for software (web or download) look like garbage. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. With that subjectivity in mind we want to ask you: what are the ugliest, most cumbersome, least effective interfaces out there? Mind you, we're talking GUI here -- command line interfaces are a kind of beauty you simply can't ...