Distracting background was not an isolated case

Speaking of the devil, after I posted yesterday about background images that distract from the content, it seems that many of the blog I have come across today has been suffering from this particular problem. Either make the text surround your stunning visuals or the other way around, but don't overlap them! And when considering the background decoration for your blog or website, please keep in mind that photo-realistic image is more distracting than non-photo-realistic image and that repeating patterns can be very distracting whether they are big or small.

When the background makes the text unreadable

Some time ago I came across with blog that had very nice visual look with a beautiful floral background. Unfortunately the text was completely hidden by the beautiful background, so actually reading the blog was not possible without considerable effort. It is not uncommon to see so distracting visuals on the background of blogs and website that it makes users abandon all hope of reading the content and wanting to leave as soon as possible. Flashing advertisements may try to steal your attention but at least they don't (usually) hinder you from reading the content of the site. So if you want to put some nice visuals on the background of your blog or website, please make sure that decorations and text don't overlap.

Where is english?

Recently I encountered this language choosing dialog and at first it seemed quite puzzling because for a while I thought there were no selection for English. Only when I stopped glancing those flags and read the texts I found English was the first of the selections, which makes sense, but why do they use flag of Canada to mark English language? Of course English is used in Canada, but usually English as a language is marked with either UK or US flags or their combination. And if they thought UK and US flags were too predictable and easy for the users, then why they chose Canada and not Australia, New Zealand or Nauru? Maybe the designer was from Canada?