2004.01.07
 | --One side of a hanging french fry-themed triptych in a Connecticut McDonalds. The other two sides were a bit less fraught with Freudian overtones. |
Law Geekery of the Moment
Over the holiday I finally saw LotR: The Return of the King. In celebration, a slightly older link, a law geek looks at the deal Sauron offers Dáin (dwarven king) to get the One Ring back. An amusing interpretation via legalese.
Rant of the Moment
Googling I stumbled onto this brochureware webpage which has the worst navigation I've seen this year. A circular menu, fine, except it only appears when the mouse is over the narrow clickable band, otherwise it's invisible. So the user experience is mousing around looking for a hot spot, suddenly images randomly appear in the center circle, and you have to figure out cause and effect and how to get to the unusual interface shape without actually seeing it. Genius!
I only mention it because he responded to my relatively polite suggesting for improving it (just have the circular menu visible, even if dimmed out, when the stark "db" logo appears) with lines like "The awards that the design has won contradict your opinion." and "You have successfully proven yourself a nitwit that knows nothing about marketing"--apparently, flickering, unnavigable sites are the cornerstone of a solid marketing strategy.
Anyone agree/disagree with me on this?
Followup: there is some chance it's a browser-specific effect. Still, I wonder about people who don't at least try to glance at their site with the market-dominant browser.