Sightings: One excellent site each day.

Previous Sightings
May, 2002

Arizona Business & Education Coalition
I loved the simple theme that was continued throughout the pages. Not very content rich, but an innovative design for a small site. (Sighted by Carrie Sherrill)

Favourite Web Site Awards
This Flash award site lists all the winners since May 2000, and it's one of the first public sites I've seen that has content to show off the new Flash MX player's capabilities. The rather hard-to-read main page does not reflect the contents. If you can't find new Flash ideas here, you're a true expert. (submitted by Nick Dellar)

MADWorks(R)
A professional graphics design site that has possibly one of the most surprising--and usable--Flash menus I've ever seen. After you get past the music you can't turn off (What is it with Flash sites anyhow? They seem to feel a need to impose their generally nauseating MP3 clips on unwary visitors.) and the rather typical intro (skip it), the artwork is great. (sighted by Russell Jones)

Chanel
Laboring under the assumption that haute couture fashion houses would naturally have well-designed Web sites, I searched them all. My assumption was incorrect. This was the only site I found that was in any way organized intuitively in terms of either navigation or content. Also, it possesses the only successful presentation of the designer's latest runway fashion show that I was able to find. (Sighted by Erin Gannon)

Chuy's Fine Tex Mex
Great site, creative use of Flash. In fact, both the Flash and non-Flash portions of the site are tasty, though a bit slow to load. (Sighted by Jenny)

American Wilderness Coalition
This site is not only environmentally informative but has a good format for submission of support [or not] for pertinent issues. Depending on the environmental issue at hand, when you click on "take action" and follow the links it gives you several sample responses to choose from that are entered directly into the response body to be edited. It also selects your legislators by your zip code. American Wilderness is a clean, well done, informative, socially conscious site. (Sighted by Ruth Haines)

LOSERS dot ORG
Whether it's Web sites showing syrupy pictures of loving couples, sites with huge background images and animated GIFs, groupies' fan sites, bloggers with nothing to say day after day, or sci-fi fans in need of a life, LOSERS dot ORG unmercifully calls 'em as they see 'em. It's a hilarious read and the editors are dead-on. Some of the older links may have changed since this site posted them, but the recently added links are worth a visit for a chuckle. Spartan site design works because, after all, they don't pretend to be something they aren't; they're just poking fun. Only thing missing is a search engine to see if your site made their list. (Sighted by Stefan Gruenwedel)

ShoutOut
Cingular Wireless created this Web site to attract the "youth market," complete with chat rooms, games, ring tones, horoscopes, and entertainment listings. That marketing notion aside, what's cool is the use of color and a consistent "express yourself" theme that pervades the site. Also, the home page sports a neat click-and-drag effect that's easily customizable. It serves no function but it does reflect the target audience's penchant for playfulness. (Sighted by Stefan Gruenwedel)

NADAguides
The base functionality on this site is a database that lets you look up "blue book" values on every vehicle man ever made. Which is cool enough in itself. (You can even find out how to rate condition on used vehicles.) All the other great stuff, such as the ability to find cars for sale, get financing, do research (look up whether your car is a "lemon"), check your credit, download DMV forms, etc. is just the gravy. mmmmm, gravy. (Sighted by Dan McCormack)

Hidden Beauty Gallery
Other than the fact that the image thumbnails are rather small, I thought this was a pleasant presentation for a small arts and antiques shop. The text descriptions of the items are detailed, which is nice. What would be really great, of course, would be search ... followed by e-commerce. (Sighted by Lori Piquet)

American Civil Liberties Union
Want to get involved? Start here. The American Civil Liberties Union site is not only a political activist's haven, it's also (mostly) well designed, with some very creative UI features for a pure HTML site. (sighted by Russell Jones)

GreatDomains.com
Looking for a domain name, or already have one and want to know what it's worth? Is the perfect name already taken? It may be for sale. Search domain names here, make an offer for existing names, or have your domain name appraised. This site is fast, and usable. (sighted by Russell Jones)

Becoming Human
This site just blew me away. The content focus of the site is evolution and Human origins. Really well organized. Different threads of different topics are presented ingeniously. For the best example of this, check out the documentary. It's got pretty much anything you want to know on this subject (unless your interest is more than casual, in which case, go take a class.) It's really well put together, pretty, and thorough.(Sighted by Erin Gannon)

Creative Factory
Looking for interesting ideas for your site's navigational icons? Take a look at how the designers of tcfactory.com set up its main menu. Instead of having just a static list of links to the different pages in the site, they've added an image with attached buttons that move and also link to the other pages. (Sighted by Glen Kunene)

Second Story Interactive Studios
Second Story Interactive Studios has brought the same innovative philosophy to its own Web site that it has lent to its clients' projects. One look at their site will demonstrate why their melding of design, art, and writing into a cohesive, dynamic online experience has won Second Story awards. (Sighted by Glen Kunene)

ThaMiddleMen.com
The subtle use of Flash is a rare accomplishment, but ThaMiddleMen.com has pulled it off successfully. Avoiding the common overindulgence in all the bells and whistles that Flash offers, the designers practiced restraint to keep the site simple and functional with just enough animation to catch the user's eye. (Sighted by Glen Kunene)

The Impressionist Era
This site is part of the ThinkQuest Internet Challenge Library which contains unique educational Web sites that have been created by kids for kids through ThinkQuest competitions and programs. This particular site on Impressionism has some really great stuff in the "Interact" section--cool timeline, a puzzle, a quiz, and an excellent palatte viewer that shows you which colors were used by each of several painters. (Sighted by Carrie Sherrill)

Bom.com
I wasn't even looking for this site. I came across it accidentally. However, the Flash animation on the home page was very, very effective at catching my attention. The Flash animation is definitely the best visual part of the site--though the rest is very clean and simple to navigate as well. (Sighted by Seairth Jacobs)

bloc
Have you ever found a Web site and then immediately wished you hadn't found it because you know you can kiss about 10,000 hours of your life goodbye in hanging out there? Bloc is a U.K.-based short fiction zine that I am fairly delighted with. Minimalist design lets the content shine. Good use of side and, surprisingly, bottom navigation bars. (Sighted by Lori Piquet)

Twofifty
This requires some bandwidth but take a look anyway. It's a simple exhibition/gallery site for digital artists. Users can freely submit their art so long as it meets the 250 x 250 pixel format. I love the thumbnail menu, in particular the way the color "turns on" as you hover over each sample. (Sighted by Lori Piquet)

Long Bets
This site was designed to foster long-term thinking--not just to the next fiscal year but the next century and beyond. It's a spin-off of The Long Now Foundation, which is building a clock to run 10,000 years. People come here to bet on long-range predictions and discuss the future. Consider this bet: "At least one human alive in the year 2000 will still be alive in 2150." Or this one: "By the end of 2012, more than 50% of the root servers on the Internet will be located outside the United States." These thoughts raise more issues than they seem to at first. How far ahead are you thinking? This site even anticipates the coming "Y10K bug," when the year following 9999 is 10000, not 0000 as many systems will indicate. That's pretty cool. (Sighted by Stefan Gruenwedel)

Starsailor
The people who built this site know what Flash is all about. Among other things, it uses "Hover scrolling," one of my favorite Flash functions. And I was really impressed with how quickly those sound files started playing. On broadband, you can literally flip among the songs with no delay at all. (Sighted by Edna Chavira)

The Elbo Room
This site for a great San Francisco bar is clean and simple and provides just what you'd be looking for--a few nice pictures of people having fun, a schedule of events, hours of operation, booking information, and directions. (Sighted by Edna Chavira)