Sites That Need White Backgrounds, Redux

November 17, 2005, 7:25 pm ET by Vincent J. Murphy

I should really make this a more regular feature, because it annoys me soooo much. I wrote about this topic previously. The problem is that there are sites that forget to define the background color of their pages, because their quality control sucks, perhaps. Or they hired agencies that don’t give a crap. Or maybe they just never bothered to take a look at their site in browsers with different-than-default settings. Of all the sites I mentioned in my original post, only MSNBC has corrected the error.

Let’s take a look at some other offenders. To find sites with this problem, simply adjust the default background color for windows to be something other than the default. I use a nice soothing gray.

  • SBC: The home page gets it wrong, but the subpages seem okay. Note how the links near the bottom of the page are pretty unreadable without a white background.
  • Brighthand: all the pages appear bereft of a background color.
  • Pontiac: On the home page: seems like it might be on purpose. It is hard to tell. However, on the subpages, the backgrounds are white.
  • Scarborough Country: Even idiot conservative pundits can’t get it right. Not really surprising.
  • XML.org: Sometimes, even geeks can’t help. On a different note, I’d sorta expect XML.org to at least use XHTML for their site.
  • Office Depot: Even with the 13 background colors they define in their CSS, you’d think one would be applied to the body. You’d be wrong.
  • Google Analytics: Even the mighty Google isn’t immune.

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Responses to “Sites That Need White Backgrounds, Redux”

  1. Doug Isom Says:

    This is one of my web design pet peeves. I mean look at the stature of some of these companies, MSNBC, SBC, Pontiac, Office Depot. They have major budgets and should really be doing better than this. My guess is they are using in-house web departments that either 1. took some college program taught by some clown who had no real word web design experience or 2. are living high on the easy corporate buck, doing their 9 to 5 and could really care less about web standards and doing things the right way.

    November 17th, 2005 at 9:10 pm |

  2. Doug Isom's Blog Says:

    Man After My Own Heart

    Discovered a post on Strangematter pointing out how major and not so major web sites fail to specify a background color and those such as myself and Vincent J. Murphy the author of Strangematter who set their Windows colors to something other than the…

    November 17th, 2005 at 9:22 pm |

  3. Tom the big brother Says:

    I think you have too much free time on your hands. When I see, “Web Sites That Are Too Cutesy,” I may have you institutionalized.

    November 22nd, 2005 at 3:14 pm |

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