Brainfire

My friends, the Garden Glove Specialists have recently added an on-line payment facility to their website to allow card payments for their Second Skin & Ultra gardening gloves.
They sell three types of gloves:
Ultra Glove - these latex rubber gardening gloves provide thorn resistance and are great for pruning roses and pulling brambles.
Second Skin - their most popular glove, nitrile rubber thorn resistant gardening gloves, which are flexible great for potting, tying up plants and any jobs where you want to feel what you’re doing. And they’re thorn resistant!
Easy Fit - the latest gardening gloves are very light weight and great for every day use. will be available to buy soon available to buy now!
Each gardening glove has a cotton back and elasticated cuff keep all dirt and bugs out! Everyone who uses them thinks they’re fantastic!

I’ve been browsing round the world of the web tonight and I came across the site of record label 4AD. I thought, “ok, great, I’d like to read about the Cocteau Twins please”. So I found myself clicking this stupid wheel type thing until I found a bit on it that says ‘help’. This isn’t general website or accessibility help, but how to use the diabolical navigation method they had lumbered their poor unsuspecting users.
Click on tiny arrow near the letters, select a letter, drag the artist name into the light area, click the… no hold on, I don’t give a damn anymore I’ve lost interest. Why make it so hard for potential customers to find your products? Correct me if I’m incorrect, but if you need to provide help on how to use a website menu, then it’s probably not the best menu, now is it?
It’s a very well put together piece of Flash. Once you’ve ‘learnt’ how to use it, it’s not so bad and I guess it could be nice to browse an artist by year, but really, come on, it’s too complicated.
Anyone else seen a bad menu lately?

Last month saw the release of our new project: Venues.org.uk. A free venues finding service. I was responsible for designing a clear and simple user interface with emphasis on the search facility.
I’m happy with the results - all pages validate as transitional XHTML, use logical semantics and contain accessiblilty features. I also believe it’s easy to use. Plus as our reports show, many people are finding it a useful tool too! [I'll add some stats soon]

The day everyone uses Firefox will be the day all web designers rejoice. For now though, with M$ holding over 90% of the webs users with the inferior Internet Explorer, we’ll have to make do with front page BBC news.
Now come on everybody, make your own life easier, download Mozilla Firefox.