Cogent Metal

I was browsing Yahoo Answers, reflecting upon just how awesome my first post was (conclusion: very awesome), when I noticed something strange about the design of the page:

I’m sure Yahoo spent a lot of money on this design - balancing the levels of grays and greens, mapping the internal grid, making it all user friendly - but only one thing really strikes me about it:

If I wanted a long, skinny column of content I’d spraypaint it on to Nicole Richie. I use a widescreen for a reason, asshole, and it’s not so that you can hire someone to draw you shitty background patterns. This seems to be a big trend in big-budget web-design right now:

Reading text on a computer screen already sucks without these fucktards making me reach for the scrollbar every five words. How hard is it to have a webpage fill the entire screen? I spent all of three-and-a-half minutes on the layout of cogentmetal, and even this shitty design can stretch to fit any weird aspect ratio you like.

I can just imagine pony-tailed asshole web designers patting themselves on the back after pumping out another run-of-the-mill fixed-width design, jerking off to the “consistent presentation across multiple platforms” and “unity of brand impact” - here’s a tip jackasses, if someone is using a horizontal resolution of 2048 pixels, it’s not so you can fill 800 of them with content and the rest with your insipid background non-image.

Hell, you could fit two more websites in there:

Perhaps that’s the secret here: miniscule amounts of interesting content means modern sites have to cram it all together into hundreds of pages of thin columns of content, fooling you into thinking they’re worth your time. Or perhaps the margins are just left bare to store vast quantities of FAIL. Either way, unless you like staying in to a void of web-design-jism, print out this post and glue it to the front of your monitor. It will stretch to fit.