www.llew.co.uk Relaunches

An article about this? Better late than never. Robert’s been a busy boy. As the press release goes, it features “100% new material”, including:

• “latest Red Dwarf movie news”
• “latest Scrapheap Challenge series 7 news”
• “Blue Helmet now with 2 new chapters”
• “10 new movies on all new llew.TV”
• “brand new message board”
• “major biography section with new, never seen before pics”

All of which sounds great; and feedback on it has been universally positive. So why am I unconvinced? Well, for a start – I just don’t like Flash sites. I don’t like the feel of them – and I don’t particuarly like the philosophy behind the format; I believe web formats should be in the hands of a non-profit-making organisation such as this, and not a commercial company. They’re also not particuarly accessible to certain groups of people. But it’s not just that; they also seem to encourage bad web design.

A very obvious example of this occurs with the absolutely fantastic idea of (eventually) putting the entire text of The Man in the Rubber Mask online. This is such a great thing – but when you actually get round to reading it (in a visual browser), the text takes up… ooh, 20% of the screen? Perhaps less? Compare this to the article you’re reading now. A really good example of bad web design. It’s very annoying to read.

There are other examples; I don’t want to have to wait for a page to fade in and out before reading it, for a start. And it’s very, very irritating not being able to link to specific parts of the site. But you’ve heard enough. Content-wise – great. Really great. (I particuarly enjoy the way Robert writes, as well – very enthusiastic.) But I really can’t be arsed with how the site itself works; therefore I probably won’t be spending much time there. A shame.

Still, loads of other people love it, so what do I know?