The Most Expensive Website in the World

[StardogChampion]

http://digg.com/design/The_Most_Expensive_Website_in_the_World_60_million

?45 million invested foolishly by incompetents.

That is the Italian webmonster www.italia.it ? the Italian National Tourism Portal, recently put on-line by the government itself after nearly three years of uncertain wait (the project was launched March 16, 2004).

Thus this site. This blog, open to the contribution of all multimedia and new technology professionals in Italy, was born to document carefully, objectively, and analytically, point by point exactly why www.italia.it ? the site which cost 45 (forty-five) 000.000 (million) euros (of taxpayers? money) ? is a poorly designed, poorly realized, and poorly written portal, and which is begging revenge for the scandalous waste of public funding, as well as for being an offense to the competence and seriousness of Italian web professionals.

the new logo was met with doubt and question by both the mainstream media and the Italian web-based community, as it depicts an unusual combination of mixed typographical conventions, unclear metaphors and has as its most visually prominent element what is perhaps best referred to as a giant lopsided green pickle with a horizontal protrusion from one side to represent the ?t? in itaLIa (many others in the past few days have preferred less worksafe descriptions, and yes, the real logo is written with an initial lower case ?i? with the dot being ?tricolor flag? red, and the internal ?LI? in smallcaps ? but it?s graphic design you know).

There are javascript errors even on the home page. The layout is in tables instead of divs. The flash is pretty processor intensive (on my PB G4 1.67GHz), and I fear a lot of Italians may not have a computer fast enough. The footer menu is not attached to the rest of the page. You can?t click on the images, titles, or text to view an article ? you have to find the ?continue? or ?here? word that?s linked to the article. The map of Italy under the word Cartography in the Itineraries section is labeled ?Accessible map? but it?s not even clickable.

Sure, there?s a lot of information and pictures. I just thought it would have been much much better considering this is the country of ?design.?

I?m sure that the major part of the funding ended up in a handfull of bank accounts!

In short, the site is an absolute joke. DIGG IT!

 

[Adrien C]

Stupid Italians.
(give us back our world cup)

 

[hool10]

best referred to as a giant lopsided green pickle with a horizontal protrusion

:naughty:

 

[Remus]

This remides me of somethin'

http://www.powergenitalia.com/

 

[hool10]

This remides me of somethin'

http://www.powergenitalia.com/

Yep thos naughty little Italian stalions lol. :naughty:

 

[Seppo]

i'm almost speechless

 

[<RJMC>]

they can design beatifull cars but not a website?

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

they can design beatifull cars but not a website?

One of the previous versions of the Lambo website was one of the best I have ever seen, but right now, it is kind of lackluster. :/
Must be a trend.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

Stupid Italians.
(give us back our world cup)

Us?

 

[63]

Us?

Look at his avatar to define "us".

 

[ZeeM]

The layout is in tables instead of divs.

lol and what's wrong with that? What if I don't want a 99% css site?

 

[StardogChampion]

Divs aren't css.

 

[lePobz]

I'd do a better job for just a few hundred squids. But, if I knew what they were willing to pay, I might just add a few extra 0's.

 

[ZeeM]

Divs aren't css.

o rly?
because you really can make a decent site with just divs and without css :rolling:

 

[StardogChampion]

Again, Divs are not CSS, and tables are for noobs who should never charge money for a website.

 

[Dax]

If you type in "merda" (italian for shit) in Google and press I feel lucky you'll get redirected to www.italia.it

Nice touch.
It isn't that bad site tbh but I've definitely seen better.

 

[ZeeM]

Again, Divs are not CSS, and tables are for noobs who should never charge money for a website.

Rly? Where exactly I said that divs are css? :upstare:

And I do charge money for websites with tables.
Oh and good job concluding that 95% of websites are designed by noobs, I guess some else is the noob here :rolling:

 

[StardogChampion]

And I do charge money for websites with tables.

Hopefully not much.

Oh and good job concluding that 95% of websites are designed by noobs

You deny that 95% of websites are made by noobs?

 

[ZeeM]

You deny that 95% of websites are made by noobs?

I would say that for about 50% of them. Now go some of the biggest websites and professionaly made websites and check for tables. Who's the noob now? That statement "tables are for noobs" is completely stupid. Each has its own use. You can't make a website with divs and without enough css unless its a "Hello world" site or something

 

[StardogChampion]

I would say that for about 50% of them. Now go some of the biggest websites and professionaly made websites and check for tables. Who's the noob now? That statement "tables are for noobs" is completely stupid. Each has its own use. You can't make a website with divs and without enough css unless its a "Hello world" site or something

http://www.microsoft.com
http://www.yahoo.com

And I would say 95% are made by noobs, since there are millions more tiny little sites that nobody ever sees.

You're right that each has it's own use. Tables are for tabular data, not for making layouts.

 

[Shakermaker]

Thanks for posting this story. At work we tried to launch two new websites and we failed miserably due to the devs fooking up. It's good to know that it can always be worse.

 

[ZeeM]

You're right that each has it's own use. Tables are for tabular data, not for making layouts.

Tables were never meant for tabular data alone. As I said before a site with divs and without lots of CSS is useless. Different browsers sometimes draw different css differently. And if you dont want a 99% css site (which also is the case 99% of the times) you go with tables. Even vbulletin which you are using at the moment, uses tables (OMG NOOBS)
Again "tables are for noobs" is on of the dumbest things I ever heard.

 

[StardogChampion]

Technically forums are tabular data - Forum, Last Post, Thread, Posts headings etc. And note phpBB2 - the most popular opensource forum in the world and their main forum is table-less.

vBulletin 3 is old, so the chances are it might go table-less with vBulletin 4.

And tables were for tabular data until they added the border=0 attribute.

 

[Pulse]

A table is fine too.

 

[clarky003]

http://www.arbeitsagentur.de/ - 160 Million euros

Pwned?

 

[StardogChampion]

http://www.arbeitsagentur.de/ - 160 Million euros

Pwned?

That's pretty funny too. Although the coding is 100x better than the France website, although it doesn't look anything special visually.

A decent designer could seriously make both of these sites for $10000 each maximum.

 

[Doppelgofer]

i'll give you the most expensive website in the world

http://www.themostexpensive.com/

 

[ZeeM]

Technically forums are tabular data - Forum, Last Post, Thread, Posts headings etc. And note phpBB2 - the most popular opensource forum in the world and their main forum is table-less.

vBulletin 3 is old, so the chances are it might go table-less with vBulletin 4.

Yeah, you said it right, THEIR new site and THEIR new forum are tableless but not the forum THEY MAKE. Most of 934868273687239673496730967^2 of phpbb installations use tables just like subsilver does. Even the 3rd version is using tables.

And tables were for tabular data until they added the border=0 attribute.

Because before that, sites barely had pics or any complex structure.

Tables when done correctly are much less prone to browser incompatibilities in sites with complex structure.

Saying that tables are used only by noobs is like saying that petrol cars are obsolete because there are electric cars too.

 

[StardogChampion]

Tables when done correctly are much less prone to browser incompatibilities in sites with complex structure.

They're only less prone to browser incompatability because Internet Explorer is shit and won't follow web standards. Luckily IE7 does a much better job and you barely have to use any hacks.

Saying that tables are used only by noobs is like saying that petrol cars are obsolete because there are electric cars too.

Your argument is that because so many sites are using tables so that makes them okay. That's like saying everyone's using petrol cars and polluting the environment so we should just keep using them forever.

 

[ZeeM]

They're only less prone to browser incompatability because Internet Explorer is shit and won't follow web standards. Luckily IE7 does a much better job and you barely have to use any hacks.

Ok then lets make sites that comply 100% with the standards but don't work on any browser. The point is to make sites that are work for as many users as possible, not the other way around.

Your argument is that because so many sites are using tables so that makes them okay. That's like saying everyone's using petrol cars and polluting the environment so we should just keep using them forever.

I never said that we should keep using tables forever. But you said that we should use electric cars and only noobs use petrol cars. Doesn't make sense.

 

[Wanted Bob]

Plus, unlike petrol cars, tables dont cause any harm or inconvenience to the viewer. Since compatibility is a big issue, using tables when necessary doesnt make you a noob, if anything it makes people think better of you for making a decent quality website.

Personally, I just use both tables and divs for different things.

On Topic: Lol @ themostexpensive.com! Almost 5 million for a bra??? 70 million for a mansion??? Thats just nuts man.

 

[StardogChampion]

Ok then lets make sites that comply 100% with the standards but don't work on any browser. The point is to make sites that are work for as many users as possible, not the other way around.

If you knew what you were doing, websites using divs and css look fine in any browser in the world. Sites using tables don't.

Accessibility is a main point of CSS/XHTML. Try viewing a table-based site in text-only, or on a mobile phone. Tables are hardcoded and won't look great in text-only browsers. If people with bad eyesite try to increase the font size it'll probably break the entire table layout.

Plus, unlike petrol cars, tables dont cause any harm or inconvenience to the viewer.

Now true. See above.

 

[Wanted Bob]

Accessibility is a main point of CSS/XHTML. Try viewing a table-based site in text-only, or on a mobile phone. Tables are hardcoded and won't look great in text-only browsers. If people with bad eyesite try to increase the font size it'll probably break the entire table layout.

Fair point. I've only made websites that are focused on being accessible for IE and Firefox users, so I didnt think of the effects for any other browsers.