Open-Node.net

Another website I use all the time goes down in flames. Allmusic.com was always a bit on the ugly side, what with the pale-yellow-fest and cheeseball image maps going on all over the place, but I never complained. It was a useful resource for finding out who sang what song and what album it??™s on and etc. When I went there today for the first time in a couple of weeks, I saw a broken page (with prettier colors, I??™ll admit), with images overlapping text all over the place, and a message at the top saying that my browser was incompatible (I love that ??” blame the victim), and that Allmusic is optimized for IE 5.5 and higher. Worst of all, after some tinkering I realized that it was the error message itself that was pushing the images down over the text, making the site unreadable in my Firefox browser.

I??™m aghast. I??™m incredulous. I can??™t imagine anything lazier, more inconsiderate, more ???fuck you,??? or more absolutely stupid. I thought people were done pulling this stunt years ago. This isn??™t just bad for me, since I cannot (well, I could if I opened IE*, but I won??™t) use the site, it??™s bad for the Internet. It??™s bad for the growth of the web. This is one of the greatest databases ever, and it??™s now essentially a proprietary website instead of a free one supported by advertising, not because Allmusic has any special ties to Microsoft, but just because the designers are lazy and dull-witted. There is no reason, no goddamn fucking shit piss fuck REASON, for this site to only work in IE. Cross-browser compatibility is not hard, especially not with the table-based layout they??™re still using. They just mixed tables with CSS in a particularly clueless way, possibly using FrontPage or some inexcusable crap, didn??™t have a clue how to fix it, and so slapped an ???IE only??? warning up there, which ironically is the main thing that breaks the page. It would probably only look slightly askew without the warning, but wth it, it??™s unusable.

There are other issues as well. It??™s slow. It always was, but the redesign has made it even slower. I couldn??™t even get to the contact page to write an angry email. If I didn??™t think the entire web team were complete idiots, I??™d form some conspiracy theory around this fact. Now I can??™t even get back to the main page, to copy and paste that flabbergasting browser incompatibility message into this post, nor to further review the source HTML. The backend is so poor, I can??™t even properly complain about the site.

A friend of mine wrote me the other day to tell me that she was weaning herself off of FrontPage and onto Dreamweaver, and I congratulated her heartily for her move into the real world. Truth is, even if she continued to use FrontPage for the next five years, I??™d forgive her because she??™s a lovely person and also merely a humble blogger. If you??™re designing a professional, high-traffic website nowadays that only works in IE ??” I don??™t care if you??™re using FrontPage 2003 or FrontPage 2007 or FrontPage 1896 ??” you need to have your head examined. You are an evil presence on the internet, unwittingly doing Microsoft??™s bidding to their nefarious ends. And worst of all, you are making websites that grow more obnoxiously unusable to more people every day. You are in effect forcing the status quo, which for a site built on rock and roll is an ideological issue as well as a usability issue. It??™s worse than bad; it??™s wrong-headed.

*Note: I finally did open IE to be able to see the site. It??™s got a bunch of Flash embeds, which are the broken components, not that that??™s any excuse. If you??™re going to make a Flash site, go ahead. No need to make a Flash site that only works in IE. I??™ve never even heard of such a thing.

I see no sign of FrontPage design, at least not the usual automatically embedded Frontpage header tag. No matter. They are still ???unwittingly doing Microsoft??™s bidding to their nefarious ends.??? I remain stunned by the lack of consideration and thought that went into creating this. It??™s now useless to more than 10% of internet users.* ???Only works in IE,??? in web design terms, forever means ???the web designer has rocks in his head.??? Why would you do this, unless you??™re solely funded buy Microsoft? (*Those are the latest browser use numbers I??™ve heard; the number or non-IE users rises, slowly but surely, all the time.)

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October 10th 2005 Posted to   Design