MSN Beta
I had part 2 of the Being the Hype series all prepared, but then I ran across something that made me stop in my tracks. I laughed. Then I showed Rundle and laughed some more. Here is the screenshot (click on it to go to the page):
You must show greasergrill@hotmaill.com your love. It’s Friday, be proud of the fact you don’t create stuff like this. Hell let’s have fun with this. Funniest comment by Monday wins a $50 gift certificate from Amazon.com.
Related reading:
Now greasergrll is obviously an expert food flinger for the Food Network.
From her picture she’s only about 4 years old and my mother says I shouldn’t make fun of toddlers so will only say this.
Here is PROOF that it’s never too early to learn how to use a staging server.
By sunshine lewis on August 26, 2005 11:14 am
I don’t know what you mean. That is a thing of beauty.
Especially when you view source. Lovely.
By Olly on August 26, 2005 11:16 am
Introdudicing Microsoft’s New MSN.COM
- Where do you want to go today? That’s cool you can just float there like every element on this page.
- Created on an etchasketch by people with tremors.
- No pudding in muffins? Bill Cosby disagrees.
- Mashed potatoes do fly well, because it looks like someone flung some up against a monitor and said lets design this.
- Espanol | Customize this page | Fix this page
I’m done for the monment.
By Ryan Latham on August 26, 2005 11:17 am
And yes I am aware that it looks “normal” in IE 6.
By Scrivs on August 26, 2005 11:17 am
I think they are testing a couple new CSS styles.
display: anywhere;
float: random;
By Kyle Posey on August 26, 2005 11:41 am
Oh wow, that is truly awful. I have some captions.
“Microsoft adopts 37signals’ strategy: Less code and release a major upgrade in the first 30 days.”
“Microsoft decides it can one-up 37signals by having only 1 person teams. ‘Three people is too many’ said Bill Gates as he continued to code the new Beta.MSN.com himself.”
By Chris Tingom on August 26, 2005 11:59 am
The odd thing is that they are trying to pass it as XHTML 1.1 Strict.
Your Site Go Boom!
By Jeremy Flint on August 26, 2005 12:12 pm
Tired of ripping off Apple, Yahoo, and Google, Microsoft starts ripping off Picasso, at least he’s dead.
By Chris Griego on August 26, 2005 12:13 pm
Not that one would see it from that screen shot, but there are also photos of Martha Stewart, Homer Simpson (well, not a photo), and Lance Armstrong.
Well done.
My vote goes to Kyle’s display: anywhere; float: random; comment.
I can’t come up with something better than that right now.
But hey, at least MS is TRYING to use web standards. Even if they don’t get it right. It’s a content version of IE’s standards support.
By Dave Simon on August 26, 2005 12:22 pm
Shows how high and mighty those punks are at Microsoft. They design for IE6 first and then work-arounds for that pesky firefox, safari, opera that can’t render CSS correctly. Damn those browsers to hell! They ruin everything!
By Chris Griffin on August 26, 2005 12:51 pm
“Welcome to MSN: Where do you want your baby burp color scheme and layers to float today?”
By Chris Elliott on August 26, 2005 12:57 pm
Still looks better than Whitespace.
That was a joke … sort of.
By Jason G on August 26, 2005 12:58 pm
“MSN.com: Now Powered By FrontPage!”
By Graham on August 26, 2005 1:16 pm
Jason: haha, I was going to say the same thing in the entry, but figured somebody in the audience could have a stab at it. I think there is a new design coming Monday. Not sure though.
By Scrivs on August 26, 2005 1:20 pm
-QA and testing? That’s what users are for.
or
-Welcome to the land of IE. All others can go themselves.
By chroni on August 26, 2005 1:57 pm
MSN.com - Official search engine of the blind.
By Summerville on August 26, 2005 2:11 pm
I kinda like but every time I try to replicate it for my own site, the various elements won’t overlap. Where am I going wrong?
By Adrian on August 26, 2005 2:20 pm
Uh oh!
Sir, I left my CSS book at home!
By kevinn on August 26, 2005 2:47 pm
Young child Magneto gravitates all elements to her magnetic grasp.
By Justin Lilly on August 26, 2005 2:49 pm
… and it uses Microsoft technology, so it’s more useful!
By Wayne Hastings on August 26, 2005 3:08 pm
All your elements are belong to us.
By Kristen O'Brien on August 26, 2005 3:16 pm
I think one of the more telling things is that this page is still up hours after this was posted. Just goes to show that nobody at Microsoft is reading this.
By Chris Tingom on August 26, 2005 3:39 pm
MSN Alert: greasergrll ownz M$.
Divs don’t fly well
No alternatives in msn. Ever.
Why standards are boring
Figger’d it was worth a shot,
alex
By Alex Jones on August 26, 2005 3:46 pm
“Tables could not replicate the innovative design we envisioned, so we used CSS. I mean… why else would we use CSS?”
By Jonathan Liu on August 26, 2005 4:03 pm
Why is everyone so surprised this site is all messed up? I thought everyone knew that all Microsoft designers were reassigned to Windows Vista.
By Marco (Griffith) Jardim on August 26, 2005 4:59 pm
Not only does the page suck, it takes about 3 minutes to load. Who wants to wait for Microsoft? I already had to wait 10 minutes for my computer to go through the various windows is starting screens. I don’t want to wait anymore, suck ass MSN.
By kris on August 26, 2005 5:12 pm
Designing with Web Standards: $35.00
Web Standards Solutions: $34.99
Lying to your boss at Microsoft by telling him you bought the two books when you really used the expense money on iTunes downloads: priceless
By Rob on August 26, 2005 5:28 pm
Taken from the site’s source:
http://www.manga.net/
What. The. F***.
(Please, do a “View Source” on the site. You won’t regret it :-)
By Ale Muñoz on August 26, 2005 5:33 pm
mmm… well lets see…
Proudly Made with Microsoft Word
Most of the time valid XHTML (most of the time, ok?)
- Sir, we almost finish the beta page, but isnt still fully compatible with other browsers…
- Does it render?, then launch it!
By Gustavo on August 26, 2005 6:40 pm
Here we see the results of Bill’s new initiative: take your child to work day.
By Eddie Sowden on August 26, 2005 7:10 pm
That is not fair. You are just using Netscape 4 to make us laugh at them.
By the way, activating of deactivating JS makes no difference. That’s good. We all get the same. :)
By Federico on August 26, 2005 10:38 pm
A poor rip off of Yahoo!
By nack on August 27, 2005 12:45 am
Why, didn’t you know? White text on lime gives the best readability, as well as a distinguished, modern look. The old-skool black on light beige went out years ago.
By David Naylor on August 27, 2005 3:29 am
All your beta are belong to us.
Well somebody had to say it…
By Matthew Pennell on August 27, 2005 6:35 am
At the bottom of the page: “Quotes by Comstock”
“Page by incompitant disgraceful excuse for a web developer”
By Zach Blume on August 27, 2005 1:12 pm
Man, they can’t even spell grill.
By Andreas Graulund on August 27, 2005 3:41 pm
Would you “Make this your homepage”?!
By Chris on August 27, 2005 4:38 pm
That poor kid, what a horrible claim to fame.
To quote the kid:
“They told me it was either appear on MSN or be sent to the Neverland Ranch! What choice did I have?”
By Adrian on August 27, 2005 5:37 pm
And to think, they got paid to do it… *shakes head*
By Joel Samuel on August 27, 2005 5:45 pm
“MSN Beta - A demonstration of what can be accomplished visually through CSS-based design.”
“Micorsoft, working towards an ugly web.”
“MSN web dev - should have gone to specsavers.” (probably only get that if your English)
By Eddie Sowden on August 27, 2005 6:08 pm
This made me shoot diarrhea out of my eye balls.
By Johnnie Manzari on August 27, 2005 11:08 pm
“Welcome to the end of Microsoft era”
By Budi on August 27, 2005 11:42 pm
An outright disgrace to web design! Though they kind of designed it using CSS … but an outright disgrace to web design!
By Vince on August 28, 2005 12:17 am
MSN - boldly stumbling where no man fear to thread!
By Svein KÃ¥re on August 28, 2005 12:47 am
Apparently, greasergrll@hotmail.com wasn’t registered, allowing somebody to have some fun.
See http://fury.com/article/2165.php.
By Ryan on August 28, 2005 8:55 pm
That’s what happens when you stop using Microsoft Front Page for design…
By Douglas d'Aquino on August 28, 2005 9:24 pm
And you thought only tables can be ugly.
By Prabhath on August 29, 2005 2:00 am
Designer: With this new design IE will once again monopolize the market!
Bill: How so?
Designer: By only working in IE!
Bill: Great! And once IE7 comes out, even more will convert to our ways!
Designer: IE….7….
Crap.
By Elliot Swan on August 29, 2005 12:34 pm
“They’re source would’ve looked better *with* the old tables.”
Funny links:
-”Make this your homepage” AHHHH!
-”Help” Oh god yes, give me help! Wait…help from MSN? The world must be ending.
-”Customize this page” Can I remove the entire thing?
What’d you expect? It’s from MSN.
“Anyone think we should donate a design to MSN?” Hmmm…naww! This is too much fun.
By Zach Blume on August 29, 2005 12:44 pm
Wow. That looks like something I puked out after getting drunk.
By Bryan Veloso on August 29, 2005 3:43 pm
Msn is better than google, this is gospel truth.
By Taniec on August 31, 2005 8:31 am
teria que ser mais facil para instalar
By andressa on September 2, 2005 11:06 am
msn sucks…
what?
By Nicky B on September 3, 2005 12:52 pm
Well……….who won then?
By Adrian on September 6, 2005 7:43 pm
Looking over the comments now.
By Scrivs on September 6, 2005 10:36 pm
nesesito k aparescan las fotos cuando estoy chatiando con otras personas
By rafa on September 10, 2005 1:35 pm
no
By javier on September 10, 2005 5:46 pm
Must be a tough decision, eh Scrivs?
By Adrian on September 15, 2005 7:04 pm
Oh, so many funny and insightful comments!
Did anyone notice the word “beta” in beta.msn.com, meaning “A test for a computer product prior to commercial release”?
And speaking of comments. It’s really easy to mock other sites, while the comments to posts here (which take up most of the page) are 300 pixels wide. Yay! Lets scroll all the way down to hell!
Does “whitespace” stand for all the white space we see while reading the comments?
By Guy on September 23, 2005 5:25 am
Nothing personals but couldn’t msn come up with something better?
By personals on February 4, 2006 4:00 am