{"id":122,"date":"2004-10-03T19:37:39","date_gmt":"2004-10-03T19:37:39","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2004-10-03T19:37:39","modified_gmt":"2004-10-03T19:37:39","slug":"","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/?p=122","title":{"rendered":"A Most Rubbish Web Site"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have recently sent the following email to the webmaster of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aua.ac.uk\/\">Association of University Administrators web site<\/a>.  The web site is truly awful for various reasons.  My email reads:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Dear http:\/\/www.aua.ac.uk\/ webmaster,<\/p>\n<p>A colleague pointed me at your web site &#8211; she was trying to access<br \/>\ninformation about one of the workshops.  She had trouble navigating your<br \/>\nsite, because her browser doesn&#8217;t have Java installed.<\/p>\n<p>I examined your site and, when I found that Java was required solely to<br \/>\n&#8216;animate&#8217; the right-hand menu, I was rather surprised[1].  This is very<br \/>\nsloppy web design and results in a page which is inaccessible to many<br \/>\nweb users.  Not everyone is able to use Java, others may choose not to.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Users running platforms where Java is unavailable will be unable to navigate your web site.<\/li>\n<li>Users running non-Java-enabled web browsers will be unable to navigate your web site<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Even users running Java-enabled browsers will find that your site loads<br \/>\nmore slowly, simply because of the unnecessary use of Java.<\/p>\n<p>The use of Java on http:\/\/www.aua.ac.uk\/ is completely unnecessary.<br \/>\nSimple text links would work just as well.  If &#8216;flashy animation when<br \/>\nyou hover the mouse over an option&#8217; is required, then that can be<br \/>\naccomplished using CSS and certainly without the need for a Java plugin.<br \/>\nThis would make your page load faster too.<\/p>\n<p>Including a note &#8220;to view all features of this site ensure java applets<br \/>\nare enabled in your web browser&#8221; is no excuse for bad web design.<\/p>\n<p>Please consider rewriting your web site to remove the unnecessary<br \/>\nrequirement for Java.  This will make your site more accessible to all<br \/>\nweb users.<\/p>\n<p>Regards, etc.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>[1] Actually, I wasn&#8217;t surprised at all, this is an increasingly common feature of many web sites, sadly.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not just the stupid Java thing that makes that site awful, it&#8217;s the horribly flashing scrolling text banners, the tacky rotating &#8216;New!&#8217; graphics, etc.  It clearly takes a huge amount of skill to write such a bad site.<\/p>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t had a reply yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 &#8211; she was trying to access information about one of the workshops. She had&#8230;&nbsp;(<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/?p=122\">read more<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}