This spring I went to Rome for my honeymoon (first time to Rome, first time getting married).
There I met an old acquaintance, the Ugly American…and this time, it was me!
Perhaps you’ve met him: he doesn’t bother adapting himself to the locale, he expects everyone to speak English, and when they decline, he thinks increasing his […]

Like every other person who has ever surfed the web, I view pop-ups with total disdain. Mostly I ignore them…but given the opportunity, if I had all of them gathered in one place, and my forefinger on the right trigger (Firefox?), my disdain would be positively genodical.
This pop-up racism, I admit, is not entirely rational. […]

There are many details that grate on me: the slow drop down menus, the ugly gray gradient background, the pictures with people wearing sunglasses that I can barely see, the labels that use all caps, the small, blurry font, the lack of a true home page (just a splash-page picture of a girl with wild […]

I was trying to explain to my skeptical sister-in-law why I quit my proofreading job and started up with Flash.
When I explained Flash to her, she said: "Have you seen the Ray-Ban site?" Then she groaned and made quick, couple-ish eye-contact with my brother, as in "What silliness is your brother up to now"?
Later I […]

The animation that plays every time you return to the homepage (or do any repeated action) is a crime against design so blatantly hideous that I would hesitate to mention it were it not epidemic.
In the words of an unhinged David Byrne: Say something once, why say it again?

Most transitions should be handled in Flash without animation, because most transitions are driven by perusals and not commitments, and for perusals, animation is laborious.
Let's say I'm mousing over a menu; why not have text or images come up immediately, on rollover? If your design is logical (where does the material come up?) and your […]