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and is so flat that it doesn't offer any directional hinting at all.

These featureless, "wide expanse of pure white" UIs are one of the things that most irritates me about "modern" software today. They give the impression of being unfinished and opaque.

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Its not the flatness, its lack of design. See for example, https://www.sail.com.au/, which is flat too, but with a cohesive design.

I am pretty sure core to "Flat UI" is that drop shadows shouldn't be used, and there is hardly an element on that site that isn't full of them.

Flat UI is not "flat", please read up on the topic.

That site looks pretty awful to me, while I can clearly make out the buttons from other elements it looks like a old stock Drupal theme or something along those lines.

Design is highly subjective, but from the designer's eye, there is no comparison between the two sites.

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