I have, I believe, remarked before on the amazing things one can find on the 'net, for example:

Lobstercam: Pretty much what you'd expect.

Killing my Lobster: a site of strangeness. The opening page is annoyingly busy, but it fits the comedy style.

A Robot Lobster? Clear proof that scientists need to get out more--so's the Web site. Clunky and loaded with jargon--but it's kind of a cool pic.

This is a fine example of an interesting-sounding page done so badly it's not worth sticking around on. Blue text on white background, I suspect, violates the genre conventions of the Web--we expect the blue colour to be used for other things. Not to mention that the contrast is hard on the eyes. The main link is dead, and it wasn't worth waiting around to find out if there was another way in.

Lobster Press on the other hand, has quick-loading, sharp, simple pages. The only downside is that only cooked lobsters are red. Better hope your kiddies don't figure that out.

Bass Lobster needs a lot of work. The home page is crowded, and doesn't tell you word one about what the subject of the page is. The black-on-green text and blobby lobster silhouette don't help, and the rest of the text is boring and crowded-looking. Actually, the whole green-on-beige thing is kinda ugly.

These guys got it right. Open the page and the nature of the organization is right there. The menu is handy, the page uncluttered, and the picture beautiful (provided you find lobsters beautiful). Some of the text on the other pages could be more usefully "chunked up", but overall a pleasure to read. If you don't visit that page you should at least have a squiz at this one.

Boy this one's annoying! The site itself is okay, uninspired and text-heavy, but not heavy -handed. however, in order to reach this, I had clicked on a link in my search engine which read: "Giant Tasmanian Freshwater Lobster", with the included text appearing to be about water-dwelling creatures. No dice. It's the municipal Web site for access to the Tasmanian community of Smithton, and nary a clawed invertebrate in-site!

Omigod! I almost didn't bother visiting this--and me a space junkie! The site suffers from several design problems, but they aren't insurmountable if you're determined.

General problems observed in this sampling:

1) Information design--you have to be general enough to get hits from search engines, but specific enough not to anger people looking for info (many Government Web sites have yet to get this straight).

The information and links need short, descriptive titles; for example, the ubiquitous "About Us" is commonly presumed to refer to an organization's mission statement or purpose, perhaps with something about its history or roots, and its staff.

If I'm looking for the historic records of the Widgets-R-Us company, and their Web site has links to "History" and "Archive"--I had better have a little blurb to help me decide which to pick. 'Cos in the world of wired you only get half a chance to make a first impression.

2) Colour--the Mac-designed Doonesbury site (see links at right) shows fine examples of "dirty colours", which include pastels and muted hues. Considering that most monitors rely on a cathode ray tube projecting radiation at the viewers' eyeballs, it behooves us, methinks, to take advantage of muted tones wherever possible. The green around this page is both to mute and to focus. I find other templates less helpful. The blogger green-on-green template seems really hard to read, to my mind.

Perhaps the trick is to contrast your text with your background, but avoid high contrasts? If the decision is difficult, I'd tend to stick with black-on-white. Also, I'm not certain of the general application, but it looks to me as though the higher the contrast between your text and background, the more you need a sans serif font (like this one). The Roman serif font at that blue-on-white page makes for really tough sledding.

3) General page design--I'm having trouble figuring out why it is that pages I put together that fit on the 15-inch monitors I design on don't fit into my 17-inch monitor I view on from home.

The single most annoying thing about any page is having to scroll one inch to the right to see the end of the line, then back again to see the beginning of the next. When I find pages like that I often copy and paste the text into a .txt file to read in comfort.

4) Oh--and noise. I don't mind a short intro soundburst, but repeating themes and effects (the menu "blip" and page loading "shhh" at Doonesbury spring to mind) eventually make me turn off the sound. And for the love of whatever you believe in, don't make it MIDI those single-tone electronic bleeps are responsible for a number of workplace shootings--I'm convinced of it.

By the way, the word of the day is. . . ?