Johan Janssens Posted…

As I'm a belgian web designer myself, I was quite curious about this site. Like u said it looks nice at first, so let's take a look behind the scenes ... Jeeeeeezzz what a mess.

Well let's do some tests. Since i'm not very fund on that many images, let see what happens if i put image loading off ? Er, hmm just a blank screen, no text, no links, nothing ! Bit difficult to navigate this masterpiece of e-culture and creativity.

Image loading back on. Hmm let's try to put javascript off. Whoops, there go the menu and image rollovers.

Pretty sad indeed. There's still a lot off work to be done before the world will learn about webstandards and real webdesign.

Keith Posted…

I wish I could say I'm surprised. There has been lots of good work done not only in the realm of Web standards but other Web design and development best practices, but let's not forget that there is lots of work to be done.

The sad truth is the "average" Web site, designed by the "average" Web designer and build by the "average" Web developer is going to look something like this. If not worse.

I'm not trying to say that those who develop with standards are "better" -- just that there are many designers and developers out there who either don't have the time, the desire or the opportunity to develop and learn.

With the sad state of standard Web support that the most commonly used browser on the Web is in, you could argue that we're the ones wasting our time.

To those of us who have a passion for Web design and are constantly striving for something better, this may seem strange, but it's something we need to not lose sight of and we need to keep striving to bring these folks along. You and I know the benefits of Web standards and usability, we just need to keep trying to spread the word and not assume that people will just "get" it.

Lon Posted…

You can create a perfectly 'standard' webpage that validate and still not see a thing when turning off images or script. This is not about standards, it's about usability.

And usability has nothing to do with browser. This page is equally unusable in FireBird.

I wish some of you guys would stop complaining about poor standards support by a certain browser and start directing some of that energy towards a creative use of current standards support. IE (assuming that's the browser under scrutiny) may not be the most standards-compliant browser around, but it certainly is the most powerful one if you want to create appealing browser based applications.

So let's talk about usability and how to improve it. Let's find ways to utilize what we have now. And let's not waste time designing logo's for campaigns that are not in the interest of the end user.

Simon Willison Posted…

I wish some of you guys would stop complaining about poor standards support by a certain browser and start directing some of that energy towards a creative use of current standards support.

We are! That's what the whole web standards movement is about. We're constantly striving to make standards compliant sites with CSS layouts do ever more exciting things. Complaints about IE are merely a side effect of doing this, as the further you get in to standards compliant design the more frequently you get burnt by IE's lack of standards.

IE (assuming that’s the browser under scrutiny) may not be the most standards-compliant browser around, but it certainly is the most powerful one if you want to create appealing browser based applications.

That simply isn't true. Mozilla based browsers have better DOM support than IE, and the two most popular IE extensons for web applications (innerHTML and contentEditable) have been made available in Mozilla as well, because they were recognised as highly useful extensions to the standards. In addition, Mozilla has XUL which quite simply blows IE out of the water when it comes to building browser based applications. Fire up the Mozilla Amazon Browser (click the link at the top of the right hand column entitled "start MAB now!") in Mozilla or Firebird and see for yourself.

I agree completely with your points about the site's problem being related more to usability (and accessibility) than to standards compliance. If the site used real text, avoided inaccessible javascript and had alt attributes on the images itwould be a huge improvement, and whether or not it validated wouldn't be particularly important. That said, validation is frequently a good indication of how well a site has been constructed - in terms of accessibility at any rate.

Michael Heilemann Posted…

"I’m not trying to say that those who develop with standards are 'better'

Then I'll say it for you: Developers that use standards are better.

Keith Posted…

Lon, you make some good points and of course this site has major usability problems.

For the record, in my mind, Usability, Accessibility and Web standards all go hand in hand, you can have one with out the others, but they all compliment each other and while you can argue that one is more important that the others (I've often done this myself) they do go together and a truly user-centric, successful site should address all of them.

That is what I mean when I mention 'Web best practices".

Johan Janssens Posted…

I contacted the firm who made the hetpaleis site The site got elected beacause they did a fairly large usability test this summer. They adapted their site following the recommondations of that test and claim that have a substantially increase in visitors.

I've read the usability report. The tests were not taken by a usability expert but by a student culture management. So it doesn't deal with real usability issues. It rather deals with the following core question

• Does the site reach is target audience ?
• Who is visiting the site ?
• What do the visitors thinks of the site ?

Based on this pseudo usability test they conclude that hetpaleis is one of the better site in their category, namely e-culture.

I also agree completely with previous comments about the site’s problem being related more to usability (and accessibility) than to standards compliance. But using this kind of pseudo usability tests is not the way to go here.

Chris Posted…

It's good the same level of understanding and effort go into this award as do all UN programs!

andreas Posted…

Keith and Lon, the key problems here are indeed accessibility and usability (added the latter in my entry - thanks for pointing that out), with Keith's important addition that very often accessibility and usability go hand in hand with the use of web standards. E.g. using unordered lists for navigation is not only semantically correct, but it also improves the navigation's accessibility and even allows a user to navigate on the site with a not too common internet enabled device.

Johan, thanks for pointing to the report. I was surprised to find out that Ann Laenen, who made the site report, is doing a Phd in Arts and Accessibility, though.

jimbob Posted…