[Sigia-l] Fitts' Law gone crazy? <OT>

[Lyle Kantrovich]

I'd agree with Davezilla that the font size is overkill for most
folks, and ends up being a poor use of space.  Note also just how big
your browser window needs to be when on the home page to get the
search box to be above the fold...then notice all the wasted
whitespace in the top left.  Not what I'd call good layout.

The ability to click on a search result's "bounding box" is
interesting, and their use of tab ordering is quite good.

Given that the site has pretty much *no* explanation of it's purpose
or target audience...it's hard to say what they are trying to
accomplish.

A little "view source" snooping hints that they are targeting a "low
vision" audience, which isn't surprising:

<meta name="description" content="Big.com - The search engine with the
most readable results on the Web.">
<meta name="keywords" content="search, search engine, big, big.com,
web search, low vision, limited vision, large type, readable">

I do find it humorous that the somehow found a way (using a table
layout) to consume over 3.5Kb of html code (yes, it's a small file
size anyways) for a page that has nearly NO content on it.  A good CSS
layout would be more efficient.

Lyle

On 3/17/06, Davezilla <davezilla at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/17/06, Listera <listera at rcn.com> wrote:
> > Or on to something big with the aging baby boomers? USA Today of search? Out
> > Googling the Google UI?
>
> I'm a big fan of sites with large type on their forms (like Flickr,
> Panic Software, 37 Signals, WordPress, etc.) but I found the results
> were so large (even at the smallest of the Big sizes), that the amount
> of scrolling was ridiculous. I suppose if I had severe visual
> impairments, this would be a blessing. The contrast and fonts couldn't
> be easier to read.
>
> --
> Color me gone,
> Davezilla
> http://davezilla.com/
>
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