looks like I've found a partner in crime to work on badpractices.com. Right now we're trying to think up general catagories for it such as evil banners, rude customer services, confusing navigation, flash abuse... what can you think of that would make good galleries of bad practices?

I'm not sure what category you'd put this under? Maybe a heuristic: User control and freedom?

personally i think teeny type could almost be a category of its own...

Sigh.

Drives me up the wall. You would think we would know better by now....

And to make it even worse, a good percentage of sites that do this also end up telling people they don't meet the requirements even if they do, because of botched Javascript sniffer code.

3. "Untitled Document" as the page title.

badpractices.com is a huge task! Have you considered limiting the scope, to say, usability but not coding practices?

but you do suggest some good metacategories: bad design, bad usability, bad coding, bad client, bad vendor...

I certainly have a collection of pet peeves to contribute (complete with screenshots), but I would personally find goodpractices.com more helpful. I think that as a group we IA/Usability types are far too critical; it's much easier to critique than to praise (let alone create), and we could all do with fewer "grr"s and more "nice job"s.

http://www.baddesigns.com/

Halp!!

If you release a URL as part of a mailer or an ad, maybe the website should payoff that collateral in some small way.Example one: Sony has covered Montgomery station with ads for a new Vaio laptop, the R505. When you go the page in the ads, sony.com/vaio/ there is no immediate link between the print ad and the website. Oh, there's an "ad" in the lower right corner: "now save $500 on select R505 notebooks," but that's the only visible connexion.Example two: I just got my bill from SprintPCS. They announced a new, simplified invoice. However, to switch to that new format, I have to go to the Sprint site and change some preference in my customer information. Fine. Following the steps listed in the mailer, I log on, click on "My Services" and when the page loads, look for "Bill Type". Although there are a plethora of services that I can add to my service (for which Sprint will be me), there's nothing even vaguely reminiscent of "Bill Type". You could also include the fact that using their site is the only way of changing this preference. A lot of companies are pushing customers to websites that are not equipped to meet those customer's needs.

This discussion inspired me to finish the FTSE 100 Usability Awards

I'm quite with you, I do think bestpractices are important to concentrate on, but goodpractices.com is taken *and* I think people enjoy putting up offenders and a badpractices.com will attract more activity. Also, i'd like to suggest a format for it that will cause people who put up offenders to offer up solutions on how it could have been a good practice instead, rather than just griping for giggles. (gripingforgiggles.com might have been fun also!)

speaking of partner in crime, jenifer has posted a teensy survey that I hope you will be kind enough to take. 7 questions! easy!

And he talks at lots of conferences, so a lot of designers hear him and do what he says.

Zeldman and I fought about this just this friday, at web design 01, and I still don't agree that pixels are the way to go. However, Shawn convinced him he was making his very valable information unavailable to people who could use it, and he said he would look at removing the size definition altogether. he made the very fine point that if he did allow his page to becoem "ugly" by increasign the size, many designers would not longer listen to him. We three discussed the use of a "large type version" which i hope he will implement. i appreciate it hugely on IHT.

As much as I like Zeldman and what he has to say, I don't think his site's font size is what makes web designers listen to him - it's his excellent writing style, laid-back manner of presenting at conferences, and valuable information.

how bout a complete category dedicated to everything jacob says. I have idiotic stakeholders all over me telling me how to do my job on a bad rainy day just because they read about what jake had to say! Phew... sorry bout that.

i need help getting an address for a cell phone number. It will be worth your time$$$$.

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