July 15, 2000

5:56 PM

The 'biggest band in the world'are the last to get their site on line... (Not counting the Popmart site that only lasted as long as the American tour, after which MSN simply took it down, leaving European fans bewildered. It was a money thing.) Obviously still in beta, it is surprising the site has gone live already. Check the source for the company that made it: Good Technology. I would love to hear some expert feedback on the dhtml usage.
posted by prolific (11 comments total)

Humph. Its got one of those annoying zero delay redirects that make standard back button use a challenge.
posted by quonsar at 6:35 PM on July 15, 2000

Reading 'lounge' backwards and through a wall, hard to read text (red colored 'recommended'), unlabeled sub-navigation. Bah!

I am so sick of all the corporate shite on the web, it makes it hard to find all the quality blogs.
posted by Mick at 7:41 PM on July 15, 2000

I dunno... I sorta like it. It pushes the limits. I'd like to see how cross-browser compatible it is though (I've only looked at it in IE5).

My only complaint is that it doesn't say much about the character of U2. The site is somewhat dry once you get past the initial coolness of the dHTML if you ask me.
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 7:55 PM on July 15, 2000

OK... playing around with the site a bit more, I don't like it now. hehe... The navigation is hampered by the dHTML... It took me a minute to find the "exit" button on the "popup" layers so that I could navigate around the rest of the site. Not too intuitive if you ask me.
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 7:58 PM on July 15, 2000

The typical "blueprint-inspired cubes on a diagonal on a dark grey background" design that's so popular with design houses right now. The site has a very unwelcoming feel to it. I got javascript errors on a few of the 'exit' buttons on the pop up layers. Not very impressive.
posted by the webmistress at 8:04 PM on July 15, 2000

I'm still looking for a corporate sponsored artist website that outdoes what fans put together for the same artist. The corporate sites look fancy, but zero content. I'm sure there are exceptions out there but for the artists I'm interested in, I haven't seen it yet.

I mean Billy Joel's website has this obnoxious sliding java interface on the front. Move your mouse to the right, the screen scrolls to the left. It's like a cat trying to walk on a globe of the world. The Discography looks cool, but is functionally annoying and there's only music links on his latest album cuz that's the one they want to sell. There should be at least part of songs available for each entry. And lyric sheets. I still miss the old Lyrics.ch before the corporate shills forced them to shut it down. It's a ghost of what it once was.


posted by ZachsMind at 11:29 PM on July 15, 2000

I agree, the site doesn't say 'U2' to me. It says "webshop doing the latest fad". I get the feeling it's not supposed to be live yet. u2.com is supposed to be located here.

The site also doesn't click with the supposed vibe of the new album, which is going to be quite domestic lyrically -all about life in Dublin, Bono's kids, his dad, etc.

I tested with IE 5.5. and Netscape 4.7. This time Netscape seemed a little more stable, fewer javascript errors. The navigation is slow and cumbersome on both. This is going to be very frustrating for the millions of fans.


posted by prolific at 1:23 AM on July 16, 2000

That's for sure. How did you come across the site? Did you hear about it or just type in the url? It really reminds me of a deserted soundstage.
posted by the webmistress at 1:36 AM on July 16, 2000

They don't plan on being finished before September. This is like critiquing an olympic diver's performance before she climbs the ladder. I don't like what I see so far, but Web-wise, two and a half months is a very long time.
posted by ZachsMind at 7:49 AM on July 16, 2000

The url was announced a few weeks ago - but it wasn't working then, the statement read that www.worldonline.com/u2 would be the future host of u2.com
Since then, fans have been keeping an eye on things.
posted by prolific at 8:33 AM on July 16, 2000

Hmmm... then they really shouldn't have thrown it up on the web if it wasn't complete yet.
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 12:15 PM on July 16, 2000