Silver Surfer Friendly Award
Below are three versions of the Silver Surfer Friendly
Award. Only websites which have won this award are
entitled to display one of these avatars. They occupy
scant memory 1Kb or 2Kb and therefore load swiftly.
Silver Surfer Friendly Award copyright © Coxsoft Art 2006.
The Coxsoft Art Silver Surfer Friendly Award recognizes
websites that are safe, attractive, interesting, useful,
quick to load, easy to read and to navigate, with good
colour contrast, clear fonts, tasteful pertinent graphics
and an easily found e-mail routine that actually works!
Imagine the following scenario. Your son or daughter
buys the latest, state-of-the-art, 10 trillion megawatt
PC that runs central heating and answers the doorbell.
You are given the offspring's old PC with a 133Mz CPU
running Windows 98 Second Edition. It comes with a
56K modem and a box of floppy disks, but no manual.
You haven't touched a computer since your Sinclair
Z80 blew up. Don't panic! The Silver Surfer is here.
Follow the Silver Surfer for a great online experience.
At least, that's how it's supposed to work....
What gets the bum's rush?
Press CONTROL_A to find out.
Black text on navy blue paper and azure text on white paper.
Get the picture? This happens on many websites, because
somebody assumes we're all using black ink on white paper.
What else? Tiny fonts, juvenile ya-ya prose, illiterate prose,
porn, pop-ups, crashing IE6, sliding unwanted nasties into a
visitor's PC, intrusive adverts, Flash Player nonsense, long
loading times, screen stays blank during interminable loads,
hopeless navigation, no email address, unreadable ink/paper
colours in "contact us" boxes, lots of cookies, unnecessary
demands for personal details (especially from children), PDF
files, smut and installing Quick Time without users' consent.
You can click your mouse now. Did I make my point?
Get the picture? This happens on many websites, because
somebody assumes we're all using black ink on white paper.
What else? Tiny fonts, juvenile ya-ya prose, illiterate prose,
porn, pop-ups, crashing IE6, sliding unwanted nasties into a
visitor's PC, intrusive adverts, Flash Player nonsense, long
loading times, screen stays blank during interminable loads,
hopeless navigation, no email address, unreadable ink/paper
colours in "contact us" boxes, lots of cookies, unnecessary
demands for personal details (especially from children), PDF
files, smut and installing Quick Time without users' consent.
This award isn't about programming skills or technical
brilliance (a glance at my own code will tell you this).
It's all about user-friendliness. It doesn't matter how
brilliant a website is; if my CPU can't handle it, it's a
waste of my time. Big corporations need to learn this.
If you want to apply for the Coxsoft Art Silver Surfer
Friendly Award, use the e-mail box below. You will
receive a read receipt. If you don't win, that's it; I'm
too kind-hearted to tell you. If you qualify, I'll e-mail
you the above avatars. You choose which one to use.
If your website is large or borderline, it may take me
a few visits over a week or two to assess it. If I find
minor problems, I'll tell you so you may correct them.
There are no rankings, no "pending" or "failure" lists.
Do check your links, spellings and page loading times.
But first click the link below to see the list of winners.
Winners Page
This award is registered with Global Internet Directories
and certified by Quality Independent Web Awards (QIWA).
For the latest arts news visit
Coxsoft Art News.
