Let it be known that I'm a huge Beatles fan, and have long wondered why there hasn't been an official site.

Finally it's here www.thebeatles.com

According to the papers it cost £2million. I'm sorry to have to report that it's really poorly implemented.

It uses all of the latest 'flash' and 'shockwave' technology and hence makes itself unaccesable to the majority of users.

I try and stay fairly up to date and have Flash 4 and a fairly recent release of Shockwave installed. This is the first site that I've come across where these don't work.

To be fair, the site offers a 'lo-tech' version. This still requires a version 4 browser and several plug-ins.

I won't go on about the navigation, you can judge for yourself. I will however say that the designers have felt it necessary to provide a help page explaining how 'easy' the site is to use.

To my mind one of the reasons why The Beatles had (and continue to have) such global appeal, is that they mean so much to a huge variety of people.

That the website goes in the opposite direction is quite sad.

Ed

ps: a good time to put a link to Dick Gaughan's 'rant on web design