While hunting round the WebStandards site I spotted a link to a revised version of the UK's awful train timetable site. At first I assumed it was a demo, there have been quite a few makeovers of high profile sites with poor HTML, such as Slashdot and UseIT*.
However, it's not a demo, but a functional version of the site. If you want to find out about train times in the UK I heartily recommend this site, instead of the official one!
www.dracos.co.uk/railway/timetable/
* When I googled for this link, it appears that there have been competitions to do this before, but link here is the one I was thinking of.
-Dom
Re:Odeon Too
ajt on 2004-02-15T11:13:16
I find it so depressing that companies and organisations waste monopoly money budgets on awful web sites.
Large companies spend silly ammounts, and end up with utter rubbish. It's annoying as it's the end user that picks up the cost in poor usability and/or higher product prices, and good designers go without contracts.
For non-proftit organisations and charities, it's money that could be better spent that is wasted. That makes me sad and reluctant to donante to organisations I feel do actual good in the world.
When I first started to use the web, it was via Mosaic on the University's Sun systems. Netscape was only just in beta, IE didn't exist, and web sites contained mostly content. Since then we have made great strides in usability, and browser technology, yet most sites now have less content than they use to, and most sites have poorer usability than sites did 10 years ago.
It's not all doom and gloom, there are some very good, standard compliant, easy to use, accessible, attractive, content rich web sites, it's just that they are clearly in the minority. Most sites are visually prettier than sites of a decade ago, but in virtually all other regards they are worse.
The Future of Web Design
Dom2 on 2004-02-15T14:09:19
Whilst many companies are continuing to throw out crap web sites, I think that things are on the whole getting better. The vanguard of use web standards and accessibility means that a lot more sites are coming out with vastly improved markup and a lot less JavaScript.I was commenting to a web designer not two nights ago about how much easier it has been to use lynx on most web sites in the past year or so. He agreed and was saying how much easier web design was getting now CSS support was better and you didn't have to have polluted mark up everywhere.
Given that sites that are done with web standards cost less (certainly in terms of bandwidth), are more flexible (redesign entire site with a single file), and look better whilst being more accessible, I think that we're going to see designers snowballing towards such things.
Whilst there will always be some holdouts, there's a clear business case for designing better web sites than we have at the moment.
I think things are looking up!
-Dom (off to do a re^Wdesign of his own site)
Re:The Future of Web Design
ajt on 2004-02-15T15:37:04
I can't agree more that good design is possible. There are also quite a few good examples too, but while it may be getting better, I don't think it's that noticeable yet.
The comment about CSS support is a bit of red-herring really, Mozilla, Opera 6/7 and IE6 have been available for quite a few years now, and their standard support is about as good as it gets. Safari is new to the party, so doesn't count for my argument, but IE on the Mac was a good browser. The XHTML and CSS specs are also a number of years old too. Basically what has happened is that a tiny number of people are now starting to use the standards - not that everyone has changed their browser.
There are better examples to follow, which may explain the lag better. There was no reason not to design a proper site three years ago, but no body did, because most designers didn't know how to, and their design crutch (Dreamweaver) had - and still has - no idea. There are lots of better examples to copy and learn from now, which makes the design easier.
The fiscal arguments are the same as they have always been, but I think if you are a designer then you will only use them if you know them and can design properly, if you can't you don't mention them. The PHBs have no idea, and so have to trust what the designer says.
Re:The Future of Web Design
Dom2 on 2004-02-15T21:50:15
Whilst the techology has remained largely the same for a while, I think attitudes amongst designers are changing. This is largely due to the fact that more and more people do have access to a 5th generation browser which lets you use all the nice features of the standards.This has changed things from the $$$ side of things. Before the 5th generation browsers where so widely available, you would lose a lot of customers if you designed using web standards. Now, they're widely supported, you can spend less and do more.
It's certainly more than a tiny number of people that are starting to use web standards properly as well. You do have big name sites that are moving towards. Browse the archives on zeldman.com for some conversions. ESPN is often quoted as an example, although I think that they rank as a could do better after viewing source on their site (interview). wired is probably a better example.
I still think that there's much to be positive about. The notion of using web standards appears to be growing and growing amongst the design community and I can only see things getting better.
-Dom
Re:The Future of Web Design
ajt on 2004-02-16T09:03:12
I agree that it's a change in attitude of designers, but I still contend that the technology has been available for a long while already, and that the designers are lagging behind the browsers, not because the technology isn't available, but because designers either don't know how to code to standards, or because they are too conservative.
I accept that people can tend to be conservative, when it's their job at stake, but as Zeldman points out hybrid designs are possible, that look good, are accessible/usable, work going forward, and have sufficient backwards compatibility to be commercially conservative.
However, I still believe that most sites are awful, and that many new sites are still awful, orkut is brand new, but it's html is ancient and not very good, it has poor accessability, and there are many poor design aspects.
"I still think that there's much to be positive about. The notion of using web standards appears to be growing and growing amongst the design community and I can only see things getting better."I may not agree about how positive things are now, I've seen a lot of new and awful sites of late, but I agree that designers are catching up with the technology, and that things are getting better.
Re:The Future of Web Design
drhyde on 2004-02-16T09:13:25
Whilst there will always be some holdouts... What, you mean non-compliant sites like mine?
:-) It's remaining non-compliant because I lack the motivation to fart around with web shit when I could be doing something more interesting like drinking beer.
Re:The Future of Web Design
ajt on 2004-02-16T09:56:07
While your site is Invalid, it doesn't use crap, so it works. I like my xhtml to be valid which helps get a predictable behaviour, but it's more important not to abuse technology, just to get a specific effect that is fragile and unnecessary.
The things I really hate are the unnecessary things, e.g. the xhtml/css/DOM/Javascript tricks that add something you don't really need, and only work under a limited set of conditions, for examples browser sniffing Javascript.
Your site may be invalid html, but it works as is. Fixing the html will help make the results more predictable, and reduce your bandwidth usage, but as there are no nasty tricks to remove, it won't make it any better in that respect.
Unless your usage charges are eating into your beer budget, there is no point in doing anything with it. Though going forward you should make your pages more valid, in the same way that you would make a working Perl hack into something better to avoid nasty surprises.
