It’s never occurred to me that people actually use Funky Chickens as a valid resource for learning HTML. In fact, even after it was nominated for one of my infamous reviews (on several occasions) it wasn’t until I saw it linked alongside tutorialtastic as a valid place to learn code that I thought .. “eh? are they serious?” Apparently so.
The first thing that really hits me about Funky Chickens is the layout. Now, as any angered pants award recipient will tell you: my layouts are crap, I “can’t make a CSS”, etc. etc.. However, despite my obvious deficiency I know a really shit website when I see one. The vicious pinks and blues do not look good on top of ‘pure’ white. It’s very hard on my eyes (and I’m using a nice low contrast laptop: I won’t even try to imagine how these colours would look on my screen at work.) The adverts, which I’m fortunate enough not to see but noticed in the alexa® thumbnail, hardly add a touch of class, either. The first sentence of the introduction sums up the layout, actually: “Funky Chickens was created in December 1999
” …and obviously hasn’t been updated since.
The underlined blue ‘header’ (if you can call it that) is misleading — even in this day and age where colours are used a-plenty, it is hard not to associate blue underlined text with a link. The “Funky-chickens.com Information” contains an obviously outdated autobiography and no visible link back to the home page, but at least confirms that the owner assumes himself to be a “web-designer”. Call me elitist if you will, but I believe you have to actually design something to call yourself a web designer.
The first page, “Beginner?” links to some dodgy free hosts (most of which probably don’t exist any more, I’m just too lazy to check) and at the bottom is a chunk of lovely-jubbly code. The problem with this is that there is no explanation what-so-ever. What’s <html> mean? Why do we have to add <title>? More important than valid code (shock, horror!) is an understanding of what your current code does, and this site does not even begin to try and explain — that goes for every single page.
The tables ‘tutorial’ invalidates with a massive 1970 warnings, according to my Firefox HTML Validator toolbar. Now, it sometimes likes to exaggerate and I’m sure a lot of these errors are caused by the copious amounts of advertising but ..1970?! Missing quotation marks around attributes and deprecated tags galore; these are the primary problems.
Superfluous (see, had to chuck it in there somewhere) JavaScript (on a page named ‘java2.shtml’ no less, ARGH) and a very dodgy looking sign-up box for ‘free hits’; ‘sponsor’ links which are just make-monkey schemes and advertisements for Diet Pills and various other drugs of questionable legality — these are all things that make Funky Chickens pants. A terrible unwillingness to update the code examples to bring them in line with 21st Century standards, or to even bother to explain what they do — this is what makes Funky Chickens pants.
Joshua: your website is pants. Please, accept this award as a token of my absolute hatred for the code you choose to continue to distribute:
And, as per usual, feel free to direct-link :)
05 Mar at 12:39 am
Oh my god.. I remember seeing funky chickens back in 1999’ish.. o.O
05 Mar at 12:54 am
Those panties look pretty. They are too worthy for the site’s content.
05 Mar at 12:54 am
Wow. And on the right-hand corner there is a such thing of a button that says; UPDATED! *RESOURCES! I wonder how old the designer is. o_o
05 Mar at 1:02 am
I remember when I just started out with HTML I passed this site because it was so horrible. It still is.
05 Mar at 1:03 am
I actually thought this site was dodgy back in 2003 when I started learning HTML. And that is shocking, because I’ve trusted some truly dodgy resources.
05 Mar at 1:28 am
I don’t use profanity, but funky chickens made me want to when I saw it. :P The ads alone gave me a strong urge to puke. Thank goodness I didn’t use that site when I was learning HTML.
05 Mar at 2:08 am
wow! i am in too much shock over the name to even think about the layout… who in their right mind would make a site called funky-chickens… i thought yumyup (my site name) was random, but this blows my right out of the water… wow!
05 Mar at 2:34 am
Julie’s right – you’re being too generous. :P
05 Mar at 2:46 am
I never get why you pass out pretty underwear to bad sites. :( I want the pretty underwear, me me!
05 Mar at 2:49 am
that website offends me in every possible way…
05 Mar at 4:07 am
I remember seeing Funky Chickens back around 1999 – 2000… I think the only thing I learned from that site was how to change cursors. I still can’t believe that this site is still up and running. I’d love to bitch slap the owner.
05 Mar at 4:20 am
LOL, I agree with the others…the pants are too pretty for such a site. XD I’ve never ever heard of that site before…I can see why and I am quite glad. :P
05 Mar at 7:20 am
Eeeeeek. I used to visit Funky Chickens. It was my favourite resource until, you know… I learnt better :S
05 Mar at 7:27 am
I agree, you need a saggy old pair of Y fronts for your award i think Jem :o)
05 Mar at 12:48 pm
i learned simple codings from funky-chickens.com when i was a beginner.. and it wasn’t that bad.
05 Mar at 1:54 pm
I can’t see it at school, it is classed as spyware. I’ll have a look later when I get home!
05 Mar at 3:28 pm
Oh funkychickens, I remember it … fondly? Maybe that’s not the word I’m looking for :P
05 Mar at 3:57 pm
“Funky Chickens was created in December 1999” …and obviously hasn’t been updated since. LOL ARG dear god – no wonder you didn’t link to it – it offends me!
05 Mar at 5:15 pm
Haha, I remember that site being around when I was first learning. I got to it and all I could think was, are they fucking kidding? It’s so horrible to look at, who in there right mind would use it as a reference site for website building?
05 Mar at 6:45 pm
Never heard of that site till now. It really hurt my eyes. I agree with everyone else, your pants are too pretty. You should hand out smelly briefs instead. ;)
05 Mar at 6:58 pm
@ALL: Unfortunately, my slightly scraggier pants are still zipped up in my back-up from before I formatted my laptop, and I haven’t had chance to stick them back in My Documents. I had to resort to using the only stock photo of a pair of pants that I could find! (And thus, this is why they look sexier than normal.)
05 Mar at 7:41 pm
I can’t believe I wasted all that energy of moving my hands to type the URL into the address bar. Surely anyone learning HTML would be put off by the pathetic design and overall hopelessness of that deadly site. I mean, if someone knows how to get to a website about how to make web pages yourself, then they’re going to have some idea of what a decent website looks like. And ? What? Talk to someone about a ‘website provider’ and they’ll probably think you’re actually an alien just guessing the website vocabluary. Mind you, there is one thing I can forgine them for. Back in 1999, the things were probably much different. Mind you, I’d only ever touched a computer once back then
05 Mar at 8:18 pm
Lmao, nice pants! My first impression on that site was “eeeep”. And you’re the best css-er *new word!* I know, I learnt basically all my valid html from TutorialTastic.
05 Mar at 8:39 pm
Uh, Jem? I may sound a bit naive, but you know how you’ve been lecturing about the celebrity photograph use? Out of pure curiosity, I emailed the owner of sweetandtalented.com, a celebrity photo site, and asked if visitors had the right to use the images and claim as their own. Here’s what she told me: http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c267/coolheartsadelina/huh.png Am I missing something here?! No license requirements, anything…?
05 Mar at 8:44 pm
@Sasha: The fact is, the owner of sweetandtalented.com doesn’t own the original photographs (as she clearly states in her sidebar) and therefore has no right to decide what can and can’t be done with them anyway. I don’t know if I understand what you’re asking o.O Are you questioning whether or not the owner of sweetandtalented.com is sane, or whether or not I’m right by saying using celeb photographs is infringing on the rights of the original photographer?
05 Mar at 9:46 pm
To Jem: Actually, I was just curious about out the “owner’s” views on the matter. I am pretty sure your facts are valid, but I simply wanted to, uh, check, I guess? I am not trying to contradict your opinion, mind you. And here comes the question of sanity, and I will not go any further with that. :)
05 Mar at 9:48 pm
Cool :) Well, hopefully I clarified for you – feel free to ask any other questions though. :)
05 Mar at 11:13 pm
You know, to save you the trouble, instead of making a pants award, just put up a “Wall of Shame” site somewhere on your domain and have all these rants there. It’ll be just as conspicuous, not that’s a bad thing here.
05 Mar at 11:17 pm
@Stephanie: Are you kidding?! It”s so fun watching people get underwear shoved in their face. More, more!
06 Mar at 12:10 am
Funky Chickens is still around? Wow. I remember coming across that website many years ago (quite possibly in ’99) and reading some ‘tutorials’ and promptly closing the window. Oh, and the layout is still the same. I guess it’s just never been updated… That site really deserves more than a Pants Award…it deserved to be burned in return for burning my eyes.
06 Mar at 4:18 am
Quite the train wreck. How is this still around?
06 Mar at 11:01 am
I just visited funky-chickens for the first time (thanks to your entry) and needles to say it will be the last time too. My eyes hurt from the colors used so I didn’t bother to stick around to find all the things you were talking about. A well deserved pants award!
06 Mar at 12:21 pm
It seems to me that owner of Funky Chickens seems to have forgotten he even has an HTML “tutorial” site (using the term “tutorial” loosely here). I will admit that when I first started my forays into website design, I sometimes went to this site for help, but I soon learned the error of my ways..hehe. FC definitely deserves this pants award! LOL
06 Mar at 5:35 pm
Golly, no kidding? The last time I went to that site was way back in 1999 when I owned an Expage dot com based website! Apparently, I got to know about that place because Expage was quite actively promoting Funky Chickens as an “excellent” source of HTML help. :P Being a total noob back then, it became one of my key resources. THANK GOODNESS that is no longer so! :P And yup, their code is horrendously outdated as well. It still looks exactly the same as when I last visited … 7 years ago?
06 Mar at 7:54 pm
Oh, wow. I remember that website from back when I still used expage. It looks exactly the same! Heh. He says on there that he’d like to make the site his “own” and change the colours and whatnot, which he never did (I’m pretty sure pink was the girl’s choosing), so I wonder what’s going on there. I would assume he’s forgotten about it, but he must’ve renewed it at some point after he first bought it from the original owner. It amazes me that anyone would still use it… even back in 1999 and 2000 when it was up to date and I was still 10 or 11, it wasn’t exactly the best resource. Of course, the main reason I disliked it was half of the codes didn’t work on my silly little expage site. (Ahh, I’m almost too ashamed to admit I even had one.)
06 Mar at 11:45 pm
I knew funky-chickens.com in 1999 when I first started creating webpages :) I used a lot of their JS. Yes, maybe I was naive, but I dare you to name a decent personal website created in 1999 that wasn’t loaded with JS pop-ups. Seriously, this type of website was the norm back then. It’s not really a valid resource these days because more standards have been created and we’re a bit less childish and more knowledgeable, but I don’t think it has been updated since 1999, maybe if they had bothered, it would be a bit better. For now, though, this is just a prime example of the kinds of crap websites that you found in 1999. I mean, just check Lissa Explains, too. It’s all the same.
09 Mar at 1:55 am
Oh. My. Gosh. Stunned.
11 Mar at 5:05 pm
Ha, I used to visit Funky Chickens when I couldn’t remember the code for ‘those snazzy things you can write html code in’ xD Which, as it turns out, aren’t even a valid way of displaying code. Ha. I’m talking about text areas. :O I was rather young.
13 Mar at 4:40 am
haha I remember using that site and lissaexplains.com when I was around 8-10. Back in the day when a bunch of us had neopets accounts LOL
17 Mar at 7:14 pm
I remember using that for Neopets too, lol. I honsetly have forgot about it and haven’t come across it again since. I only happened to use one code on there that did happen to work. So true about the colors. They burn my eyes terribly. =/
25 Mar at 8:48 pm
I actually took the time to go to the site. Get me some kind of drug.
04 Apr at 12:17 am
My gosh! It certainly is, er, brightly coloured, isn’t it! :O
11 Jun at 9:23 pm
I definitely learned a lot from them back when I was on Neopets. So while it hasn’t been updated, they are the reason to blame for me dallying into website design. Now I’m feeling slightly sentimental and sad. While it clearly isn’t a good tutorial for today’s learners, it seems rather harsh to harp on something that clearly hasn’t been updated in ages. FC is like an old, doddering uncle who you try and protect from the truth of the world. For me, anyway.
30 Dec at 6:02 am
This chick is clearly off her head. I pity the children, should they exist outside of her imagination. Wow, talk about the most irresponsible host known to the internet. When will morons ever learn to use a proxy for their sockpuppeting purposes? Then again, perhaps it’s a good thing they haven’t figured it out yet.
30 Dec at 6:36 am
Bahahaha. I’d love to say more, but I can’t bring myself to look into this. This is insane. :|
30 Dec at 6:36 am
Barbi wrote some shit in my comments after I’d commented at Vera’s blog (I cannot remember what I said.) But I just deleted it and replaced it with something like ‘I’m a stupid bitch that cannot spell’. Not the most matured of responses, but made me laugh! I could never take someone serious that spells so atrociously, even though I’m not the best speller, at least most of what I write is legible. I don’t understand why a) nobody looks at her whois and send her ‘gifts.’ See how she likes it, or contact candiishit’s reseller host and say that they are both comprimising their terms and conditions of the conract, there are rules about spreading hate, and harrassing others. I’m sure Vera could get some kind of police action involved for the harrassment of posting the details. My phone number and address registered are both wrong because I’ve moved house and had a new phone since last year!
30 Dec at 6:39 am
hmm… I bet she’s a 12-year old pretending to be 20-something. Her immature actions would embarass many teens!
30 Dec at 6:41 am
Additionally: Spelling Translation: My site is almost done, so I am working so hard on this, and recoding everything after Beth at her site hosted by a dumb whore named Vera remember her the one that took it upon herself to write a crack-headed review about me. So.. she’s working on her site, after beth? you know the one vera hosts? review? WTF this realllllllllllllllly does not make annnny sense even if you mess around with grammar. She’s just trying to spread hate and is coming across like a right twat.
30 Dec at 6:46 am
@V : they have… unfortunately 9 out of 10 times they use the same proxy… which defeats the purpose of course. Now off to see my comments, I’m expecting “gifts” in my WP moderation queue ^.^
30 Dec at 7:08 am
Wow. Now, that is something completely messed up. Who would have figured that someone would pull that type of craziness just ovr something so simple.
30 Dec at 8:00 am
That’s really to bad to hear. Please excuse me for my next comment though, but I laughed my arse off when reading the comments left on Vera’s site. That Barbi girl sure has some issues, you’d think she would at least come up with a better slam word other then ass toy every five seconds. Then again, she can’t spell, so what can be expected? I hope this drama soon finishes up for you Vera! Thanks for the post Jem, I had a few giggles.
30 Dec at 8:24 am
On her site it says: I had Gastric Bypass Surgery on July 30, 2003. So far, I’ve lost around 150 pounds. My Bloginality is INFJ. I’m sorry that she had to have the surgery but 150 pounds??? That’s more than what I weigh. That’s only 30 pounds below double of me! And what the heck is a bloginatlity?? Barbi is an idiot. And I hope, for Vera’s sake, that everything clears up soon. Well done Jem. Once again, you have written one of my favourite blogs.
30 Dec at 8:32 am
This chick cracks me up. I went to her site and she still hasn’t learned to spell and she’s still ragging on people for being “cunts”. Wow. Seriously messed up.
30 Dec at 10:21 am
I bet that girl isn’t in her twenties, more like her pre-teens. She sounds very loony indeed. I know of a few more loony people, too, however I won’t name them. :P
30 Dec at 11:01 am
I would suggest that Vera take some legal action against this girl to prevent her from disclosing her personal details. As for Barbi, I am more inclined to think she is just a small minded child seeking attention rather than a bipolar sufferer. Poor Vera, luckily she has you and hopefully many more real friends to help her through this.
30 Dec at 11:42 am
What I’ve read, makes sense that this Barbi Lee is nuts. Plus she accused Vera of using proxies, so why was she (barbilee) silly enough to use the same IP on each comment she gave using different names?
30 Dec at 1:52 pm
Look at all those typos… … I’m curious… what do you mean by cutesy forum? I’m a member of Kawaiiville.com and even if the name is all “cutesy”, we are actually very mature about serious topics. http://tinyurl.com/263opy ^ Read the answers… She can’t spell “apply”.
30 Dec at 2:41 pm
HAHA! Crazy Woman! It will be some geeky girl who wants a bit of drama, a boyfriend maybe a kid or 2. Tis’ quite funny thou. I’m surprised barbi isn’t over here spamming your site.
30 Dec at 3:29 pm
Online drama is just…pointless?? I try not to get involved. This blog post made me laugh though, thanks for the entertainment, some people really are crazy! lol. She probably is just 12 or something :P
30 Dec at 6:36 pm
Maybe she literally lost him…it wouldn’t surprise me. It’s the little girl I feel sorry for – what chance does she have, really?
30 Dec at 7:17 pm
Gee, what this girl is doing sounds utterly ridiculous. A nutcase, no doubt. And seriously, her usage of swear language! I always found that excessive usage of swear language indicates a low IQ since they express themselves properly in the normal English language. Ack. Poor Vera. She is definitely the victim in this whole saga.
30 Dec at 8:06 pm
And if you liked this post, you’ll love the follow-up…
30 Dec at 8:11 pm
Part of me is just hoping this is someone creating and living behind this personality for shits and giggles. It’s just too much to think about that if this person really *is* real, that their brain comprehension is below that of someone around 8 years old. D:
31 Dec at 11:04 am
sadly, she did it to me… i emailed you :]
04 Jan at 10:03 am
Hmm. You do not need to be a webhost to get whois information. It is easily obtainable through any free resources like Domain tools and more. I do not think any apology should be issued. For example, your review of my old site is still up, however, I do not care. Though we took a while, we have come to a peaceable existence, at least to my knowledge. This kind of stuff has been happening for years. I simply say ignore it. It always ends up the same in the end. You could probably do a reverse IP of the webhost and find out where the servers are located and who runs those servers. The webhost is also held accountable for their actions.
04 Jan at 2:12 pm
..nobody said you do? So you think someone should be allowed to distribute another’s personal information on their web site and via email – something which contravenes various data privacy laws – as well as get away with calling people “baby killer” (amongst other things). You think they should be allowed to make threats of physical violence and continuously harass someone? Murder has been happening for years, it doesn’t make it right – does it? Already been, done, and taking action.
10 Jan at 6:03 pm
She commented my site saying that one of my hostees has been “harassing” her, so I email her and talk in a 3-way over msn with her and my hostee (Ann). I thought, okay, I’m gonna listen to both sides to be fair, and what happens? BarbiLee turns out to have some sort of mental health problem and turns all physco on me. It was good practise I guess though, as I’ll soon be studying physcology in college and it was alright practising. I’m just worried that because I didn’t take her side, I’llbe the victim next to her spamming. At least with wordpress you can block i.ps.
11 Jan at 3:09 am
*waits for BarbiLee to start spamming this entry with comments*
21 Jan at 1:49 pm
Hey… I ran into this girl online once, didn’t know anything about her and commented on her site. Then I looked around a bit more and she turned out to be pretty psychotic. Didn’t know this was already the general consensus. Lol.
22 Feb at 9:01 am
I just have an argument with this girl, see more here: http://www.kawaiiville.com/forums/showthread.php?t=100069 I do think they closed it since I asked to.
23 Feb at 1:26 am
Barbi is telling alot of lies about her son Rennes, which is not true. Barbi was in and out of jail and mental hospitals in Narrowsburg where her so called good boyfriend was doing her, not proper for staff to be doing the patients. She left her son, her x boyfriend of 1 year told her she could see him at school, so she didn’t attack him with any objects, like forks, playstations.As far as x beating her not true, Barbi was the beater. So anyone who buys Barbi’s lies would have to be crazy.the little boy was not beaten, people are making false calls and that is why child was remove, not like her daughter falling out of bed or head first over railings and not taken to hospital to be checked out. So please do not believe any tales that Barbi tells you.