Reacting to all of the gratuitously ugly web pages on the world wide web, Patrick Lynch and Sarah Horton, along with the Yale University Press, have published the Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites. They've also put together a web site devoted to promoting the book. There's just one thing though, the web site is just plain ugly.

Pages with brown, blue, and black lettering on white and gray backgrounds. Page titles that use a smaller point size than body text. Advertising plugs to sell the book everywhere you look (sometimes more than once on the same page).

The introduction helpfully points out "Most of the design advice and technical information contained here on optimizing graphics in Web pages is tailored to recent versions (2.0 or later) of both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer."

Hello? Anyone home? 2.0 versions of Navigator and IE are NOT recent versions. You'd think that people who wrote an ENTIRE BOOK about web design would know this.

The introduction continues "There is little here of benefit to users of text-based Web browsers, as the primary focus of this manual is on graphic page design."

Well golly gee guys, thanks. Do you REALLY THINK that people are out there combing the web looking for style tips to make their pages look better for users using LYNX? Did you REALLY NEED to point this out, or are you just so used to being long-winded Yale blowhards that when you start typing you just can't help but point out the painfully obvious?

The site continues with such mind-numbing gems as "Graphic user interfaces were designed to give people direct control over their personal computers," "research on the needs and demographics of your target audience is crucial," and "The goal is to provide for the needs of all of your potential users, adapting Web technology to their expectations, and never requiring the reader to simply conform to an interface that puts unnecessary obstacles in their paths." Well DUUUUUUUUUUUUUH!

About feedback, they have this to say: "Testing your designs and getting feedback from users is the best way to see whether your design ideas are giving users what they want from your site."

Here's some feedback for you Patrick Lynch and Sarah: Your site sucks ass!

Check it out yourself

gable@pigdog.org