Sports Illustrated on line? *#!! Amazing. Sports Illustrated For Kids (SIFK)? Even better. The overall rating finally hits boombastic.

This site is thee-ick: Informative content for days-pro-team addresses, scientific explanations, interviews with stars-in a time when a lot of sites are hollow. Updates are inevitable so kids will keep coming back.

The really nice things are a full navigational menu; a healthy mix of athletes (pro, college, and local), both individuals and teams; and stimulating content. Nice breadth here.

Being a kid is all about the experience and info is sometimes as cool as a scar. Both facilitate interaction, friendship, and status. Any site that works to assist this is truly ice cream with nuts.

Outstanding detail: Tougher words are spelled out phonetically and with definitions to boot. This site is all about learning from start to finish-and it’s so . . . so clean.

Some things annoy: A snail-paced home page, some poor referencing (uhh, where am I?), and back-up links that kick you right out of the category. Most frustrating for a superstar site.

Visually: It needs more pics. Content is nice and all, but this is a visual generation. The wilder the image the better, so even a long wait would be well worth it and in a lot of cases it would aid comprehension.

This site’s desire for feedback is very clear. It whispers ‘write me, write me’ and then offers up amazing reinforcement by posting submissions. The best locations establish a strong dialogue with the visitor through language, interaction and content and SIFK d’es just that.

Site development should exploit the strengths of the medium. Indexing the info so that kids can use back issues as a resource would be top-notch and at the same time move the site into another dimension.

Cha-ching. The link between the figure skating profile and the Nutcracker on Ice video that’s available through the site is seamless. Enough said. Dad, where’s your wallet?

SIFK content is indeed bulletproof. Other than some annoying little glitches in execution, the whole thing is simply a freight train of knowledge. No real flash, no dash, just the wallop of content, and all is done quite well.

But? But hey, this is the Net, and the Net is a new medium. If it’s ever to go beyond being simply a virtual rendering of its print cousin, it’s going to have to change what’s on the outside.

Overall rating: Magnetic