Web sites!

Good web sites:

30 Days of Night

Warning: This web site will creep you out. It features some seriously graphic stuff, and that's the best part of it all. The site itself functions very smoothly. It has a concept with a very nice flow to it and keeps the user engaged constantly. I think that the scrolling to the right aspect is very well done because it makes the user wonder what will happen next. And to be honest, I had no idea what I was supposed to do until the night took over, which was an awesome effect. The design portion of the site is extremely well done with some really interesting technical effects that correspond to the movie dead-on. There is even a cool video game you can play. The navigation is made quite simple: the main menu sticks with you the entire time and interactive areas are marked by a splat of blood, which should be quite apparent to any user at all. Just the design and layout aspects alone are so sick and twisted, it goes without saying that it took some crazy amount of work to come up with such a well-functioning site.

Mp3.com

You can't go wrong with a simple navigation system as in Mp3.com (which is owned by CNET that has other sites like Gamespot or TV.com and are all pretty much identical.) All the things you need are right up there with you at all times like videos, photos and podcasts. There are plenty of databases to search from, with music of all sorts, and a bunch of interesting stuff that would catch the attention of any random newcomer. The layout is made to be user-friendly, with a welcoming black backround that makes it very easy to read and without that much scrolling involved. It's always nice to visit a web site that covers music, and it's even better when many aspects of a good site are present as well.

Bad web sites:

Brill Publications

I have no idea what these people were thinking designing this site... it's just awful. First off, it's extremely unwelcoming for a strange-looking, not to mention sounding, animated face of a guy to be talking to you at a first glance of the site. Riding the lift is fun! You choose the top button for "Roof Garden", and you spend what seems to be an eternity waiting for the stupid lift to get there and you end up seeing something horribly unappealing in the end. The worst part of this site is that it has this tendency to look different at almost every location within it. There is so much more I can say, but I think my eyes have commenced bleeding so I'll stop here.

Havenworks

I'm deeply, sincerely apologetic if you had to see that. And I am ever so sorry if you have gone blind at a first glance of this atrocity. Some questions come to mind about this site: where am I? What is this web site about? Is it trying to damage my eye sight? Is it coming alive and trying to attack me? Perhaps the designer was on PCP when he came up with this... um, thing. It's great how there are like a thousand pages to scroll through in order to actually find something. Most people don't even know about the CTRL+F command to find stuff. But look on the bright side - it often links you to some sites that you can stand looking at for five seconds, like Google or Youtube.