I don't like Citysearch much.

A little over a year ago, Microsoft's online ventures were expanding by leaps and bounds. One of those ventures was Sidewalk, a custom city guide for many of America's major cities. When it came to Chicago, I was initially put off because, well, it was from Microsoft. But I started using Sidewalk and quickly turned to it for movie times, restaurant recommendations, and lots more. It was a handy, useful site and one I recommended to everyone.

Apparently no one listened to me, because Sidewalk turned out to be as successful as Crystal Pepsi (I drank it!) Now, going to any Sidewalk site redirects you to Citysearch. In two words: Citysearch sucks. Here is my list of reasons.

1. The front page is overly cluttered and makes it difficult to find anything. I know it's trying to be a portal, but there is something elegant about not shoving all of your content on one page.

2. Carpoint once had a veeery smart search on its front page. You'd type in just the name of a car, and it'd take you to its info page. Citysearch needs an equivalent badly; it takes too many clicks just to get to, say, movie information.

3. Some things are broken! Once I found a theater, I used the (thoughtful) option to find restaurants in a 2-mile radius. The resulting page had no data. Yay! No restaurants!

4. Large animated ads running down the right side of the screen - ick. They've toned down on these a bit, but still.

5. For some reason, the pages are very wide. I know that you can't support everyone, but I'm running a rather large window on 1024x768, and I still need to scroll right. I feel bad for those with lesser resolutions.

What's that? I'm complaining without making recommendations? Not yet, I'm not. First, make it fast and easy to find movie, restaurant, and theater times/locations. Front page, separate search boxes, bing bang boom. Then, make sure your pages work. And, rework the interface. Make it simpler, smaller, and out of the way. After all, sites like these are supposed to be about information, not wading through ugly yellow menus! -pm