Gov web site doesn't like W's !!!

[Mark]

I usually use NoScript and/or FlashBlock.

[Jethro_uk]

Just had to use the Citroen website, and you can only see anything if you have flash enabled. The homepage is one big flash animation :(

[polygonum]

FlashBlock or iPad... :-)

[polygonum]

Many motor manufacturer sites are about as flash-laden as it is possible to achieve. Truly awful.

[Steve Firth]

Nightjar wrote: [snip]

That statement is true, as far as it goes, but a bit OTT. Most government websites have no security requirement, because the majority are for information only and simply present information already in the public domain. If hacked the only consequence is a bit of propaganda for the hackers.

Those websites that take information from the public or transact e-commerce need to be about as secure as their commercial equivalents.

And the conclusion is bollocks. Security places no strictures on the features or usability of a website. The "in depth testing" is no more onerous than that for commercial sites.

The problem as ever is fuckwitted web designers who seem to think that their job cannot be done unless they use their favourite toys, be that Flash, some CMS only they have heard of, or some off the wall webbuilder application created by a University and completely unsupported.

A significant problem for government is access to skills. They don't pay enough to attract good people and as soon as anyone gets good at their job they offski to industry for the better pay.

[Steve Firth]

Standard for a lot of European webshites. Italian ones love flash. You can have a 27" monitor with megapixel resolution and still have to look at a site in a 640x480 letterbox because the entire thing was thrown together in flash.

[The Natural Philosopher]

exactly. totally useless to try and find out any relevant information. Just animates slide shows of how it looks.

[Nightjar]

On 22/04/2013 09:29, Tim Watts wrote: ...

The people I know who have tried Paypal for taking payments on ecommerce sites have all dropped it as being more trouble than it was worth.

Colin Bignell

[djc]

For some reason hotels and restaurants like flash. Which is really stupid when all I usually want to know is the address, telephone nr. and opening hours.

[Tim Streater]

Use CSS border-radius. SImples. Her lookout if she continues to use an obsolete browser.

[Mark]

They are trying to ensure that you don't buy a Citroen.

[Big Les Wade]

polygonum posted

For some reason, large European (i.e. non-British) organisations are among the keenest devotees of unnecessarily complicated website technologies.

[Big Les Wade]

Steve Firth posted

The two issues are related. One of the main reasons web designers like to build excessively complicated sites is because they can then show them off on their CV, and get a new job all the faster, probably in the advertising industry. Whereas, they get no brownie points if they build a simple, effective, easy to maintain, universally accessible site that does exactly what their employer needs it to do.

[hewhowalksamongus]

I remember the .gov.uk site uses CSS a lot and we had a hot design team/company working on those. Vector graphic for efficiency and good design for 200K plus pages. The RNIB compliancy standards we argued with as this disagreed with the W3C compliancy rules and got them to change their rules. The designers were also able to write a few white papers based on research they conducted from the site design.

The question flash (skip intro sites) is in the useability of the site design. (my wife ended up doing a MSc in this subject. A flash site is very limited in it's audience due to the obvious problems with flash, but of late flash has become a very advanced software language for writing very interactive sites/games.

The obvious cost is in useability. These sites are great if you are a "brochure" site which contains no real content but need to look good like an advertisement fashion labels, car etc.. fine. They don't need a "sticky" site for repeat visitors it is just a shop window.

Another problem is SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Falsh is useless for untrained editors to update or SEO. I did some advice work for fun on 'Banger Rally across Europe | Roadkill Rally | The Real Rally Experience'

(blatant plug for a charity site)

If anyone here feels they can do web design work I highly recommend signing upto a newsletter from 'Home - iT4Communities'

great charity site for IT geeks.

Andy

[polygonum]

They didn't need any website to achieve their aim.

[polygonum]

That is what partner used. That is why it did not work in IE8. Absolutely - but silly that for some time the owner didn't even know that it had been done - until she saw on someone else's machine.

[polygonum]

That is something partner recently got working - but some very odd failures occur at times. We are convinced it is Paypal failing rather than the website.

[polygonum]

I really do not care if Flash is so advanced it makes Marain look like primitive grunts. It ain't on my iPad so it might as well not exist when I am using that.

If a car site only needs to look good and not have any real content, the company is being dumb. I have some quite specific requirements of cars - and if I cannot find out if a model complies or not, I shall assume not. Short list now shorter.

Sites which use Flash generally look terrible when FlashBlock is in use. :-)

The incoherent control aspects - that is, is feature under the control of Flash or the browser, or a bit of each? - are annoying.

The drain on resources is sometimes ludicrous. However, I have seen some Flash which has been astonishingly effective while using low resources - just not often the case.

[Martin Brown]

I think this one needs a statutory kick in the teeth. I suggest you forward a copy of this so called response to The Register and I am fairly sure they will do a suitable piece to embarrass the governments IT contractors over this steaming heap of dingoes kidneys.

It isn't just "w" it doesn't like any letters in the lowercase range "p-z" and "{" fail here - that is ASCII values 0x70-0x7B inclusive.

My name ends up as "Main Bon" after their website has mangled it.

Amazingly "|" 0x7C and "}" 0x7D both work as do a few top bit set characters I tried inputting. It is quite difficult to imagine how they managed to muck this input page up quite so comprehensively!

You might also want to send a copy of this to the back page of New Scientist, Computer Weekly and the technology correspondents of all national newspapers. I don't expect anything other than ridicule in the press will make any progress against their monumental incompetence.

eGovernment sites should work no matter which browser you use!!!

[The Natural Philosopher]

use exact and background image with edge transparency and rounded corners and centre it in the

If you want it to work with IE6 make it a gif, as IE6 cant handle PNG transparency.