The Best and Worst Sites of 2006
Like the rest of the world, I had to do some sort of recap. Admittedly, a few of these sites were not designed in 2006, but oh well:
The Best
1. Shaun Inman.com/post
This design I discovered only just last week, but it’s one of the most innovative (and certainly easy-to-read) designs I’ve ever seen. Not sure quite what to say about this though.
2. Nudo — Adopt and Olive Tree
It’s clean, cheerful, and I love the way they use the tree graphics.
3. Blacktree
I’m not super-impressed with the subpages, but I’m very fond of the home page. I also enjoy the contrast between the conservative serifed logotype and the more modern Gill Sans. Now if only the HTML were tidier.
4. Veerle’s Blog 2.0
It’s colorful, happy, and I love it.
5. Slate
My favorite magazine relaunched their site over the summer after years on a stale old design. The new layout I like: it’s comfortable to read, and the home page is able to present a crap-load of information in a way that’s easy to digest. And though I ordinarily despise drop-down menus, I like what they’ve done for their navigation. Two complaints though: their forums are incredibly difficult to navigation and sign in to. Also, Slate has begun splitting longer articles on to multiple pages. 
The Worst
I’m feeling a little-bit toothless for only picking sites of major companies. But trust me, they’re all justified.
1. Apple
It’s not that it’s a inherently bad design, it’s just time for a change. Apple makes the best operating system out there and some of the best hardware — both with breath-takingly good design. So why is their site still stuck in a 7-year-old design?
2. America Online
(Or I suppose just AOL after their… uhh… “brilliant” April rebranding) This website is just plain ugly. I also find it sluggish and confusing (how come when I enter my zip code for weather it can’t take a wild leap of faith that I want that same zip code for local events? Why does the “News” headline have a picture of cutest mutant animals of 2006? I can customize the page, but why can my password only be 6 to 8 characters long?). Memorably non-standards-compliant to boot.
3. MySpace
I suppose this goes without saying, but MySpace is awful. The home page is a dizzying array of ads and the user pages are a pandora’s box of bad HTML and even worse CSS. And now companies seem to have decided to jump on the Web 2.0 train to hell — Chili’s restaurants has been advertising their web address as http://myspace.com/chilis on their telivision ads for the past several months.
4. American Broadcasting Company
I congratulate ABC for being the first major network to have complete episodes online, but their website is horrible. When I first loaded it up, my computer attacked me with a loud video that played without my consent. When I browse deepr, I realize that the subpages all seem to be using an older design. And why are they still redirecting me to a subdomain of Go.com (the long-dead web portal that CNET named one of the top dot-com web flops)?
5. MediaNewsGroup
Straight out of 2001, the country’s perhaps least-favorite media company also has one of my least favorite websites.