District Court of Delaware "Hot Topics" page

A quick history lesson: Back in the early days of the World Wide Web, sites were put together by the same people who had used the primitive Internet to swap snippets of code and compare processing speeds and cooling fans. People who pushed forward the online user experience by experimenting with textured backgrounds, colored flashing text and animated images.

When the Web started to worm its way into public consciousness and companies and organizations began to appreciate the benefits — or just plain kudos — of having an online presence, these early innovators were the only people who knew how to a make a newfangled website a reality. So the companies turned to them and, confused by talk of domains, URLs, HTML and FTP, left them to get on with it. Who cared what it looked like when it was done? Modems were so rare, and speeds so slow, that few people would see it anyway, and those who did would be amazed and impressed by there being a website at all.

Eventually, as more people cottoned on to the Web, graphic designers muscled their way into the picture, bringing with them phrases like "information architecture," "standards" and "accessibility." Out went the frames with starscape backgrounds, shiny rollover buttons and lines of scrolling text; in came clean lines, white space, informative text and logical layouts, so that anyone from your average Joe to his visually impaired grandmother could get the same — the most! — from their browsing time.

But not in Delaware.

In Delaware, slate-effect backgrounds and flame text still rule.

Maybe the graphic designers didn't get as far as Delaware. Maybe they did, but didn't like the working conditions. Or maybe the employees of the District Court of Delaware work, and enjoying working, in a timewarp, with posters of Independence Day on their cubicle walls and Coolio blaring from tinny PC speakers.

"Almost all design is bad," said Dave Eggers to Flak Magazine, "and on the Web, that percentage of terribleness rises considerably. Because the medium is inherently cheap looking, there's almost no way to dignify it."

Whoever created the District Court of Delaware's Hot Topics page understands that maxim. If Web design cannot be dignified, why not have two Las Vegas light bulb arrows to make sure the reader knows that electronic filing became effective on March 1? (Presumably it was useless before?) Why not make Hot Topics really hot by adorning them with animated siren light graphics?

Court workers jaded from reams of uniform typed pages will surely appreciate this sexing up of bankruptcy judgeship vacancies and rules on the possession and utilization of electronic devices in courtroom 4B. As a package for pretty prosaic information, the site works, in a strange way: it looks like it came from last century, but damn, Delaware judiciary has never been made to feel so fresh.

— Louis Cooke (louis@mintcake.com)