# Web Design for the Clinically Insane Obsessive-Compulsive

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-design-for-the-clinically-insane-obsessive-compulsive/516075>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [November 2, 2009, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-design-for-the-clinically-insane-obsessive-compulsive/516075 "2009-11-02T18:13:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 3

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2009, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-design-for-the-clinically-insane-obsessive-compulsive/516075/41 "2009-11-03T15:01:54Z")

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Did you hear the music too? Never will I click that link again!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dhkendall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a9adbd/32.png) [@dhkendall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dhkendall)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2009, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-design-for-the-clinically-insane-obsessive-compulsive/516075/42 "2009-11-03T15:14:48Z")

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> [@fubbleskag](#):
>
> Chrome (Linux) loaded this entire page in just under 5 minutes. The HTML alone is 1.5 MB and over 14000 lines.
> 
> Also, I found Bella’s resume buried in all this crap:
> 
> oh, and since part of me wondered if viewing the full 8000x20000 pixel canvas might reveal a hidden message, I started piecing together screenshots but gave up pretty quickly.
> 
> [ImageShack - Best place for all of your image hosting and image sharing needs](http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/8885/bellax.jpg) (2+ MB)
> 
> and… the site has 4 other pages, all like the home page

No hidden message, I don’t believe the word “subtle” is in her vocabulary as the site shows.

I did notice in your screenshot (which took a while to load by itself!) that you can view it in Spanish too! ¡Ayeche wawa!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Stan\_Shmenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/94ad74/32.png) [@Stan\_Shmenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stan_Shmenge)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2009, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-design-for-the-clinically-insane-obsessive-compulsive/516075/43 "2009-11-03T15:15:48Z")

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And now that the page is loaded, and I can see the picture of the “three level prison rail cars”, well as a railfan, I can tell you that they are automobile carriers. This is as wacky as the people who made that video about the Amtrak facility in Indiana:

[Link](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcnLtz-V0eQ&feature=related)

WOOO WOOO!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2009, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-design-for-the-clinically-insane-obsessive-compulsive/516075/44 "2009-11-03T15:19:12Z")

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It loaded much faster in Firefox running on Ubuntu in a virtual machine in VMWare on my Mac, than it did in Firefox running natively on that Mac. I suspect that this is because the Ubuntu Firefox had no plugins, so there was probably some huge sound or video file I’m missing.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2009, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-design-for-the-clinically-insane-obsessive-compulsive/516075/45 "2009-11-03T22:03:55Z")

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> [@Mindfield](#):
>
> Jebus. Her entire freakin’ resume is wrapped in a mailto link! And it exists in a page that is every inch as ugly – if smaller – than her main page(s).
> 
> This … THIS … is what accounting does to you.

She’s kinda cute though.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![MrSquishy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9e5f3/32.png) [@MrSquishy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrSquishy)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2009, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-design-for-the-clinically-insane-obsessive-compulsive/516075/46 "2009-11-03T23:21:57Z")

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I knew I had seen that site somewhere before:

> **[Worst websites of 2009 from January through March #1-13 from Web Pages That Suck](http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/2009-worst-contenders-jan-march.html)**
>
> Worst websites of 2009 from January through March Part One

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mindfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mindfield/32/19759_2.png) [@Mindfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mindfield)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2009, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-design-for-the-clinically-insane-obsessive-compulsive/516075/47 "2009-11-03T23:41:13Z")

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> [@Sunspace](#):
>
> She’s kinda cute though.

Don’t be fooled by that “crazy in the head, crazy in the bed” addage. There is a fine line between “wild mad howling monkey jungle sex” and “wild mad howling slice you open and play in your entrails while you scream sex.” I’m not sure which side she treads on, but it’s not worth the risk, man.

> [@MrSquishy](#):
>
> I knew I had seen that site somewhere before:
> 
> [Worst websites of 2009 from January through March #1-13 from Web Pages That Suck](http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/2009-worst-contenders-jan-march.html)

Hey, I like that site. I think Bella’s had this year all locked up before any other contenders managed to get in though. I mean, there are others that are eyesores, others that have buggered functionality, others that make gratuitous use of web technologies they clearly don’t need – but Bella’s got it _all_ plus the goodness of insanity in one behemoth assault to the senses. It’s a one-two punch. With wrecking balls. Very, very slowly.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2009, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-design-for-the-clinically-insane-obsessive-compulsive/516075/48 "2009-11-03T23:49:24Z")

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How does she manage to get the damn thing to look like a dorm floor bulletin board that hasn’t been cleared in five semesters?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mindfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mindfield/32/19759_2.png) [@Mindfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mindfield)\
**Post date:** [November 4, 2009, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-design-for-the-clinically-insane-obsessive-compulsive/516075/49 "2009-11-04T14:23:21Z")

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> [@jayjay](#):
>
> How does she manage to get the damn thing to look like a dorm floor bulletin board that hasn’t been cleared in five semesters?

Through the obstinate, single-minded determination only the real nutters are capable of achieving.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![DETXL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/detxl/32/19366_2.png) [@DETXL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DETXL)\
**Post date:** [November 4, 2009, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-design-for-the-clinically-insane-obsessive-compulsive/516075/50 "2009-11-04T23:38:43Z")

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It’s… like… the Acid tests, except terrifying. What I like best is how, at least on Opera, while it’s loading parts of it are constantly disappearing. It’s like I’m being punked by my browser.

In terms of sheer WTFery beats the hell out of the HTML I used to have to edit for a university–the professor who centered an element on a page by nesting 17 “blockquotes” comes to mind.

> [@jayjay](#):
>
> How does she manage to get the damn thing to look like a dorm floor bulletin board that hasn’t been cleared in five semesters?

Offhand attempt at a serious answer: she’s using a WYSIWYG editor like Frontpage or something similar and treats it like you might treat a bulletin board or Microsoft’s OneNote. Presumably it then just gets uploaded to her webspace automatically–I’m pretty sure Dreamweaver will let you live-publish edits like that. Since the only times she’s working with the document is on her own computer, where it probably runs without too much stress, nobody’s told her that it’s the kind of nameless horror most of us would only expect if, say, the HTML specifications had been written by HP Lovecraft.

The fact that I imagine the only regular readers are probably her cats also may keep complaints to a minimum.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Stathol](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/71e660/32.png) [@Stathol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stathol)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2009, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-design-for-the-clinically-insane-obsessive-compulsive/516075/51 "2009-11-05T00:09:46Z")

</div>

I finally gave up and just downloaded the HTML by itself using wget…just the HTML alone weighs in at 1.5MB. I opened it up in vi and it’s just chock full of all kinds of madcap javacscript functions and other insanity. Of course, from the moment I first started downloading it, there was only one possible outcome for this whole fiasco:

I ran it through [Tidy](http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/) just to see what the fsck would happen.

The results blew my mind:

> [@](#):
>
> Info: Doctype given is “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN”  
> Info: Document content looks like HTML Proprietary  
> 5346 warnings, 0 errors were found!

I’m not sure whether I should be more amazed by the 5,000+ warnings, or by the fact that there were no actual outright errors anywhere in that whole mess.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mindfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mindfield/32/19759_2.png) [@Mindfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mindfield)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2009, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-design-for-the-clinically-insane-obsessive-compulsive/516075/52 "2009-11-05T00:31:38Z")

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> [@DETXL](#):
>
> In terms of sheer WTFery beats the hell out of the HTML I used to have to edit for a university–the professor who centered an element on a page by nesting 17 “blockquotes” comes to mind.

WTF? Did nobody tell him about the \<center\> tag? This is like people who write C++ functions that duplicate functions that already exist in the code libraries you read so much about on [The Daily WTF](http://www.thedailywtf.com).

> [@Stathol](#):
>
> I’m not sure whether I should be more amazed by the 5,000+ warnings, or by the fact that there were no actual outright errors anywhere in that whole mess.

The lack of errors must be whatever she’s using to make the page. Ditto the insane number of warnings. ($100 Internet Dollars it’s FrontPage. That thing creates _horrible_ code. I’m ashamed to admit I used it in the beginning before I knew anything about proper web design.)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2009, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-design-for-the-clinically-insane-obsessive-compulsive/516075/53 "2009-11-05T01:08:41Z")

</div>

Here’s a fascinating bit of code from the first page. It may have something to do with the insane width of the page:

```auto

<div align=right>                                                                                            "A witty and entertaining portrait </div>
<div align=right>of our war-dependent economy." </div>
<div><B>                                                                                                        Mrs</B>. <B>Susan Sarandon-</B>Actor. </div>
<div><BR></div>
<div>                              </div>
<div>                                                                                                  </div>
<div><BR></div>
<div>                                                                                                      </div>
<div><BR></div>
<div><BR></div>
<div><BR></div>
<div><BR></div>
<div><BR></div>
<div>                                                                                                         </div>
<div><BR></div>
<div><BR></div>

```

And this part makes me go WTF?! It a mass of tags, hex color specifications, CSS calls, bolds, and “lesser than/greater than” signs surrounding … absolutely nothing. It looks like a bunch of content was deleted, but the HTML editing software left all the modifying tags in place. Since this is all on a single line of HTML code, it almost looks as if there was a sentence there, _with the style elements applied each word individually_.

```auto

<div><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966"><B> </B></font><font class="ws12" color="#339966" face="Symbol"><B><></B></font></div>

```

There’s even more useless, apparently orphaned, code as you scroll through, but the above is just what I found in the first 10% or so of the code.

ETA: Scrolling further through the code, I’m starting to doubt FrontPage was involved. There’s a bunch of Linux propaganda buried in there between more huge blocks of orphaned tags.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2009, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-design-for-the-clinically-insane-obsessive-compulsive/516075/54 "2009-11-05T01:16:55Z")

</div>

Ah, here we go:

```auto

<meta name="generator" content="Web Page Maker">

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![DETXL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/detxl/32/19366_2.png) [@DETXL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DETXL)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2009, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-design-for-the-clinically-insane-obsessive-compulsive/516075/55 "2009-11-05T04:49:29Z")

</div>

> [@Mindfield](#):
>
> WTF? Did nobody tell him about the \<center\> tag? This is like people who write C++ functions that duplicate functions that already exist in the code libraries you read so much about on [The Daily WTF](http://www.thedailywtf.com).

No. And, to be honest, I’m not sure how much of it was his critical failure and how much was the editor–much of the code was five or ten years old, and at least at the time (I don’t know about today) editors were very much a “do exactly as you say” proposition–I recall at one point a blank line all the way at the bottom of the page, following about 10 carriage returns, that consisted of a hundred and seventy or so non-breaking spaces.

Frontpage was the absolute worst. I like how you can do forensics on them, tracking where changes were made, because they’re never really removed from the document. There were a bunch of documents where italics would be set and then unset and then set again, or where they’d be around a space, or where a font declaration would immediately be superceded by another font declaration. It was terrible.

I started keeping a text file of the worst of them. Sentences where every word received its own (identical) font declaration. A sentence where all the words are in Times New and the spaces are in Arial. One instance where an \<hr\> nestles cozily within a dense protective layer of eight \<div\>s. My job was cleaning up all these old HTML documents to fit the university’s new style. In one case–I shudder to think of what went away–my notes tell me a document shrank to 994 bytes. From 24,000.

Anyway, I don’t know that much about Web Page Maker, but show of hands as to who’s surprised a WYSIWYG editor was involved with this monstrosity?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![JR\_Brown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d6d6ee/32.png) [@JR\_Brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JR_Brown)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2009, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-design-for-the-clinically-insane-obsessive-compulsive/516075/56 "2009-11-05T19:49:56Z")

</div>

Camino on Mac OSX, with flash animations blocked until asked for.

I get lots and _lots_ of text and formatting and some really obnoxious music within a few seconds. Then it slows down as the browser fetches a few thousand image files, or something… still waiting… still waiting… I give up.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![JR\_Brown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d6d6ee/32.png) [@JR\_Brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JR_Brown)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2009, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-design-for-the-clinically-insane-obsessive-compulsive/516075/57 "2009-11-05T20:04:05Z")

</div>

> [@Mister\_Rik](#):
>
> Here’s a fascinating bit of code from the first page. It may have something to do with the insane width of the page:

There is actually some content buried in there; it looks like someone was trying to center it, or indent it, with lots and lots of nonbreaking spaces.

I remember when I was but a tiny tad, in grad school, using my alloted server space to put up my very first homepage. I started with some WYSIWYG editor, promptly found that it was introducing a lot of useless code and formatting that made it impossible to read and troubleshoot the document, and switched to learning the HTML codes myself. I could see where someone without my level of nerdiness could just trust the editor and end up with a mess like this.

And Ms Soto’s page is starting to render the image files!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![JR\_Brown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d6d6ee/32.png) [@JR\_Brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JR_Brown)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2009, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-design-for-the-clinically-insane-obsessive-compulsive/516075/58 "2009-11-05T20:05:22Z")

</div>

Ooo, lots of little animated GIFs!

Truely, no website can be complete without lots of little animated GIFs. 😃

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![JR\_Brown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d6d6ee/32.png) [@JR\_Brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JR_Brown)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2009, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-design-for-the-clinically-insane-obsessive-compulsive/516075/59 "2009-11-05T20:07:11Z")

</div>

And it’s done! Truly, it is a work of genius.

Only took 6 minutes. Except for the flash, which I still have turned off.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tastes_of_chocolate/32/3232_2.png) [@Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tastes_of_Chocolate)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2009, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-design-for-the-clinically-insane-obsessive-compulsive/516075/60 "2009-11-05T21:20:46Z")

</div>

Why oh why, on top of all that is on that page, did the author chose to put in a mouse pointed that trails a flock of blue dots behind it?

My mind managed to glaze over most of the page, but those dots just keep following me.

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