Comments on: Don’t Settle for Mediocrity on the Web

By: Wil Clouser

Wil Clouser — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:48:06 +0000

I’m not saying a site needs to have Flash and/or JavaScript to be quality. In fact, I’d argue the site should provide usable fallback when they aren’t available - something that usually goes overlooked these days.

XuluWarrior: It’s true - just dropping money on a site without a plan is not the answer either. Also, flash ads lag my computer too.

I’ll be the first to admit this post got a little off topic. It was 2AM and I was frustrated from using another poorly made website but talking about exporting data was a little specific. Covering the actual title of the post would take a lot more than one post, I think.

By: XuluWarrior

XuluWarrior — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:22:20 +0000

I think you’re being a bit harsh on mediocrity. A mediocre site from the 90s that has survived this long, is probably site that works and delivers value to its users.

Over the past couple of weeks I have experience a number of sites that previously were very usable if slightly basic to the modern eye which have decided to launch updated sites which are significantly less usable than before.

e.g.

http://www.nationalexpress.com now offers auto complete of journey locations. However, if you type in London, it auto completes to “Leigh-on-Sea London Road”!! You then have to manually select the real London from the list.

http://www.sadlerswells.com now has Flash banners on the home page promoting their current productions. However, scroll around the page it now jerks annoyingly (Granted I’m not using a state of the art machine but that shouldn’t be a problem visiting sites such as these). If you want to search for events that don’t appear on the home page you are in for some pain. The calendar currently defaults to January and the next month link doesn’t do anything (I’ve tested in IE6/7 and Firefox 2/3). The search link gives the helpful message “The search feature is currently unavailable”

I was going to complain about The Lyric website as after their update I couldn’t find their very useful calendar page. But having visited it again I found it. However, their recent revamp of the site is not actually any better than their previous version and I would say it is actually a bit more clunky.

Now, I assume that these revamped sites weren’t what you meant by your second category of site. But my point is sometimes mediocre is better than the probably quite expensive updates that website go through without any discernible benefit.

By: Toe

Toe — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 07:17:53 +0000

“One feels like it was made in the early 90’s: it’s mostly functional, almost renders correctly, and has the odd combination of distracting images and colors we thought was a good idea back then… If the site launched today with zero users it would probably remain that way until it was retired as a failure.”

You’ve obviously never heard of MySpace, have you?

By: Name (required)

Name (required) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 17:49:44 +0000

I categorize the 2 types of site differently. Those that work and those that require I enable script for functionality that shouldn’t require it. From my perspective accessible content doesn’t have anything to do with web2 API’s.