I found EnterTheChef.com while perusing the latest Time Out Chicago. We didn’t design the site, but I wanted to point out how some of its rulebreaking works in its favor.

First, although I didn’t know it when I first looked at the site, I’ve been to this restaurant a few times–my in laws are just down the road–and it’s an interesting place. Last time we walked in they had “Triplets of Belleville” playing on the TV. The restaurant and the menu aren’t nearly as odd as that movie, despite their “thelonious brunch live jazz & eggs” Sunday special.

Rule #1: Don’t use images, use text. The broke it in the bio section. My normal reasoning for this is search engine compatibility. Search engines can’t understand text enbedded in images. However, this little mini site doesn’t need much for search engine compatibility. It’s telling the Joey’s story. While you may or may not like the “Yo’s” all over the place, it kept me pretty engaged.

Rule #2: Don’t use a black background. The portion of the site that focuses on the restaurant has a dead simple design with a black background. I normally recommend against this as it generally makes complex pages more difficult to read. The reason it works here is that the pages are kept very simple. There aren’t a lot of pictures all over the place, no doo dads cluttering up the place.

Rule #3: Don’t use FrontPage. OK, the outcome for this site was OK, but I still don’t like FrontPage. Partly because the implementation includes code like this: “         ” (That’s on the menu.) It will be a nightmare to maintain over time and display inconsistently on different platforms. But most of the design is simple enough that slight variations in font position and registration won’t matter.

That’s Thurday’s review for Today, 2006-03-30. Have a site you’d like to see reviewed? Send a note to reid@fastwebupdates.com.

If you market by email, you’ll enjoy this piece about the reasoning behind various organizations’ anti email “tax” stance. It’s worth taking a second:

Pay-per-email and the “Market Myth”.

Check out Indeed, a meta job search site. Note how the look is almost indistinguishable from Google. Neat.

Part of me had hoped never to utter the phrase, “The Browser Wars” again, but they’re on their way back. Why? Web Standards. More importantly: Web Standards written by someone other than Microsoft.

First, don’t get the idea that I’m poo-pooing web standards. They’re what we need. The stress–the browser wars–will come from the effort to get Microsoft to get in line.

So here’s the problem: web developers have gotten significantly better at programming with web standards. Added to that: there are several non-Microsoft browsers out there that are fully compliant, so developers know it can be done and they know how much work it can save. So developers, many of whom have never been under the Microsoft umbrella, are going for it. And new services, like Wufoo, work great–except in Internet Explorer.

As a consumer of website maintenance services, your best bet is to ensure that the work on your website is at least W3C valididated. And then you have to check that any really cool functions work with the major players: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Safari.