Seizure Robots and Website Design

You probably already know about these coma inducing contraptions. The Simpson’s fell victim to them on their trip to Japan and other references can be found all over the net, but here’s the link again (WARNING! potentially lethal):

http://www.seizurerobots.com/

Somewhat related, it might be interesting for web designers/developers to note how different cultural preferences can be. Tim pointed out a long time ago how most US/European corporate websites went for a neat, professional look while Japanese sites like to add lots of colorful animations and flashy lights, much like the above mentioned site. I remember one (big) client who insisted on having a hit counter, something you won’t normally find on a professional website.

The situation is similar here in Pakistan. Though most local sites I’ve seen aren’t as nauseus and irritating, they tend to use a heavy dose of Flash, images and Java applets despite bandwidth being as precious as it is. There is little interest in the use of CSS and it is considered too elaborate for anything but the biggest sites.

I’ve been working on a totally new layout for the iinix site and am trying to keep it as simple as possible, but it is tough. Quite a few people have recommended that I use flash or lots of javascript, but the furthest I will go is maybe add more images. No tables (unless it’s tabular data), no Flash and no popups.