sf.net why do you suck?
Why is it that every time I go to sf.net the UI is a greater abomination than the previous visit? The core functionality hasn't changed, well ever, yet the UI keeps going through endless changes in some misguided attempt to follow the latest web design trends. Lately, its stuck in some horrific quest to become the poster-child for everything that is wrong with Web2.0 websites. Tons of flashy, pointless widgets, dynamic menus without a purpose, and the 'new' orange motif which looks like what I'd imagine experiencing if I was staring into the sun for too long. Is their UI designer a crackmonkey?
All that I wanted to do was find the mailing lists that were associated with a project, and it turned into numerous attempts to figure out where it got buried in this half baked UI. Once I eventually found it, and clicked on the Mailing Lists link, the new UI almost completely disappeared, and the old(er) UI re-emerged, as if awakening from hibernation. Was this some highschool design project that never got completed on time? Why would you roll out a new UI and not make it seamless across the entire website ?
So I finally found the mailing lists, and I want to scan the archives in a sane, ordered fashion. Apparently they blew their entire budget on the staring-into-the-sun UI, because the archives UI hasn't been improved in years. Its still that horrible abortion bolted on top of mailman, with 1% of the functionality.
sf.net is run by the same parent company as Slashdot. At least the slashdot crew recognized that they knew nothing about UI design, and had their community do the redesign for them. sf.net leaves me yearning for their original UI back in 2001. You know, back when it didn't suck.