I have recently sent the following email to the webmaster of the Association of University Administrators web site. The web site is truly awful for various reasons. My email reads:
Dear http://www.aua.ac.uk/ webmaster,
A colleague pointed me at your web site – she was trying to access
information about one of the workshops. She had trouble navigating your
site, because her browser doesn’t have Java installed.I examined your site and, when I found that Java was required solely to
‘animate’ the right-hand menu, I was rather surprised[1]. This is very
sloppy web design and results in a page which is inaccessible to many
web users. Not everyone is able to use Java, others may choose not to.
- Users running platforms where Java is unavailable will be unable to navigate your web site.
- Users running non-Java-enabled web browsers will be unable to navigate your web site
Even users running Java-enabled browsers will find that your site loads
more slowly, simply because of the unnecessary use of Java.The use of Java on http://www.aua.ac.uk/ is completely unnecessary.
Simple text links would work just as well. If ‘flashy animation when
you hover the mouse over an option’ is required, then that can be
accomplished using CSS and certainly without the need for a Java plugin.
This would make your page load faster too.Including a note “to view all features of this site ensure java applets
are enabled in your web browser” is no excuse for bad web design.Please consider rewriting your web site to remove the unnecessary
requirement for Java. This will make your site more accessible to all
web users.Regards, etc.
[1] Actually, I wasn’t surprised at all, this is an increasingly common feature of many web sites, sadly.
It’s not just the stupid Java thing that makes that site awful, it’s the horribly flashing scrolling text banners, the tacky rotating ‘New!’ graphics, etc. It clearly takes a huge amount of skill to write such a bad site.
I haven’t had a reply yet.
Generated by FP – what do you expect. I expect some PFY (summer job??) threw this together.
Looks kinda yacky in a gecko based browser too…alot of the RH side menu doesn’t happen for me..
I guess they haven’t read this document on the Disabilies Discrimination Act…
PermalinkGenerated by FP
Yes, FrontPage makes pretty ugly web pages, but there must have been a co-conspirator here – the Java stuff has clearly been ‘perpetrated’ by something non-FrontPage …
PermalinkFound this ugly crud in there ….
Revised: \22 September 2004
If that failed and you blog-ware tries to parse it as html, look at source code around the copyright of the main page….around the webbot stuff.
Anyway this site is almost as ugly as the stuff I threw together for Sara
And talking of your blog ware stuff, it would be nice to a preview option before I post my typo’s – or have I mentioned that before?? :-0
Permalinknyway this site is almost as ugly as the stuff I threw together for Sara
Oh my goodness, that’s awful 🙂
… it would be nice to a preview option before I post
Yeah, I might get around to using a different backend one day. At the moment, I can edit the contents of articles and comments, but no-one else. Just need some Copious Free Time to deal with it all, I suppose.
PermalinkMy blog-ware is b2 and that has ceased development. It became WordPress and someone has written a comment-previewer for it … There are a few other nice features, so I might get around to it.
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