Recently in accessibility Category

I have no idea how I got sent a link to this, but it did amuse me.

If you want to access this particular site you will need to solve this mathematical problem first:

A new look and feel was unveiled for Dilbert.com

You'd think that people would be delighted, but the opposite is the case.

Why?

Well whoever is responsible for the screwup that is the new site seems to be living in the past.

The new Flash animations are simple Flash. There's no reason why they wouldn't work in most browsers on most platforms, but if you visit the animation section using Linux you get a lovely message:

Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows XP Media Center 2005, Mac OSX 10.3 or Mac OSX 10.4 is required to view this page

So you grab yourself a copy of the UserAgent Switcher extension for Firefox and "spoof" a "supported" browser. And of course the entire thing then works fine.

Doh!

I've mentioned the horrific salesonline.ie site a couple of times in the past.

They've now taken the site offline and are instead displaying a holder page with their contact details.

At least they're not making us all suffer through that video anymore!

So anyone want to take bets on whether their new site will actually comply with any web standards?

I signed up for a StumbleUpon account nearly 3 years ago. Of course I lost the login details and ended up creating another account last year, which I then forgot about. Bernie was inviting people to connect with him earlier this evening, so I dugout the original emails...

While I can appreciate that StumbleUpon is free and useful it's got some really annoying UI / "user experience" glitches.

Why does the main page invite me to "join" when I'm already logged in?

Why does the "invite friends" screen insist on sending emails to people instead of actually searching for them? There is an option to find people via their email address, but it's well and truly buried.

The invite friends email isn't particularly well crafted either. Instead of sending you to a page to join OR login it forces you to signup, so Bernie's emails earlier this evening will probably have frustrated a load of other people (unintentionally on his part).

Jaiku has been offline for most of today, which is a pity. It looks like they're having hardware or database issues again. Pity, as its interface is so much nicer to use than Twitter.

Travian UK have restarted server 1, so hopefully I'll fare a bit better. I'm currently being slaughtered on the speed server :(

I'm currently considering getting a Blackberry or similar device. Much as I love my N95 it's lack of a full keyboard wouldn't make it my ideal choice for email "on the go".

Since we're with Vodafone I naturally thought that checking their site would be a good idea.

How wrong could I be!

There is simply no sane way to see a list of available phones on their site.

Sure. You can lie and say you are a new client and get "a" list, but if you are an existing bill pay client you will end up looking elsewhere in frustration, as the site simply does not work.

You can't see the phones unless you login.

So, you login.

Can you now see the phones? No. That would be far too logical. Not only does it ask you to login (even though the top right of the page shows that you are already logged in) but it starts asking you irrelevant questions about upgrades.
Did I say I wanted an upgrade?
Do I even care if I am eligible?
No.
All I want to know is what phones are available and roughly how much they cost.
Is that too much to ask?

Sorry about the rant!

I feel calmer now! 

I think I'll just head over to ebay instead...

I've been subscribed to some of the Irish Computer Society's newsletters for some time, though I am not a member.

Some weeks ago they sent out a newsletter without a subject line, which would have struck me as slightly odd, but when it came from ICS it struck me as incompetent. I contacted them about it, naturally, however they obviously still haven't learnt how to send out emails!

After getting back from the office I opened my personal mail to find another "helpful" email from them without a subject line and to add insult to injury the entire content of the email is a graphic!!

Accessibility where are you?

Usability level zero

Well done!

Newsletters and announcements sent via email are possibly the only direct contact people might have with an organisation. Getting the basics right is essential

When is a link not a link?

When you can't actually click on it.

Someone started a thread over on CI the other day about NetVisionary nominee Panthius

The footer of the site contains a set of "links" which DO NOT work if you are using a normal browser:


It transpires that the links do work if you use Internet Explorer, which shows how "popular" a browser that is with Irish creative and web professionals!

Regardless of what browser I may or may not be using I'm amazed that someone managed to put together a business website so badly that the links don't work. That takes effort!

It seems only yesterday that the guys behind SiteVista let me take a look at what they were cooking, but if you look at my original post it was over two years ago! I gather that SiteVista was successful and I did see its name cropping up all over the place, but for whatever reasons they guys decided to revamp it and rename it - Litmus was born! Paul gave me access to a beta account on the new system a couple of weeks ago, but I didn't get a chance to write about my experiences with it (besides they needed time to iron out some of the bugs). The new interface is very slick and incredibly fast. They've increased the number of browsers they're testing against dramatically to include a number of weird and wonderful combinations, so you too can cater for the oddballs :) (I wish whoever was looking after sites like the CRO would use services like this! ) One of the really nice features they've added is the option to share tests with the public via an easy option in the dashboard. So, for example, you could go here to see the tests I ran on an MT4 install. They've also added an email testing suite, so that you can iron out potential issues across a wide range of email clients. Want to know how your newsletter looks in AOL for example? Now you can. If you haven't got an account I'd heartily recommend you signup for a free 30 day trial. You can then whine at your web designers and back it up with proof! :)

I don't like buzzwords. In fact I'd almost go so far as to say that I loathe them. Of course I do use them - it's really hard not to. For the last 7 years or so I've been subscribed to Jakob Nielsen's newsletter. I missed a few issues over the years due to moving emails around (I have a tendency of doing that!), but I've always found his reports to be thought provoking. We're currently working on a couple of things to improve the company website and other public interfaces ie. control panels, order forms etc., As a result of this work one of the things that I have been thinking a lot about is usability. While it maybe a nice idea to have an accessible and usable website my motivations are much simpler. If we can make things more usable, then it will be easier for people to buy stuff, so we should, hopefully, get an increase in sales. Even if we don't get a direct increase in sales our costs should be lower. Why? The following example illustrates what I mean. Up until about 2 months ago we used to get a lot of phonecalls from people who wanted to pay for their hosting / domain renewals online. We've been offering the facility to do this for ages, so I was a bit confused as to the volume of phonecalls. Eventually the proverbial penny dropped: The link for credit card and Laser payments was simply too subtle for people to notice it. We knew where it was, but our poor clients didn't. Solving the problem was very easy - I just got our designer to do up a couple of obvious buttons and we integrated them into the billing system. The number of calls dropped dramatically! The addition of a simple graphic made it all that much easier for people to do things. So I'm currently thinking about how we can combine usability with gorgeous design while also focussing on our site's key purpose - sales. If anyone has experience of usability testing and reports I'd love to hear from them. PS: I blame IQ Content's post about AIB's interface for this. It really got me thinking!

ENN has been around for years. So has its current design (or at least I get that feeling) I don't have any issues with the current design, though I don't get exactly excited about it either. They're currently preparing to unveil a new design, but have made the new design available for everyone to see in advance. That's a brave move to make! In any case the new design is very different from the current site. In some ways that is a very good thing, however it's not in others. Let's examine it a bit more closely. Basic Accessibility Both the current and new versions of the site are usable using a text-based browser (lynx). The new one is slightly easier to get around, however. HTML Validation The old version does not validate and neither does the new version. The old version of the site made full use of the screen real estate, but the new one has loads of white space around it. On a lower screen resolution it probably looks ok, but on my monitor it just looks plain silly There are also some really odd design decisions that break usability. The story titles are bolded, but they're not hyperlinked (even SiliconRepublic managed to get that right!), so you have to click on the "more" link to actually get to the story. In common with so many sites these days, they've added "web 2.0" elements so that you can "digg" stories directly from the page and they've also given their RSS feeds greater prominence. From an SEO perspective, however, they've really missed the point and seem to have regressed. All the news stories have the same page title! I won't even start on the filenames! It's a shame that they didn't address some of those issues, but maybe they will before the site actually goes live.