About.com Showing Graphic Images on its Website
I received in my inbox yesterday an email forward regarding a grizzly bear. The email contained a powerpoint presentation of the story of a hunter who had killed the supposed largest grizzly bear in the world. The email contained amongst several images, one particularly gruesome image which was quite awful and which I will not link to.
I decided to Google “Giant Grizzly” in order to find out if it was all one big hoax, in the hope that it was. The first result on the list was a page on About.com’s own directory of urban legends. The About.com page regarding this email forward actually contained the same graphic image that I was so apalled by. About.com did place a warning above the image warning viewers it was a graphic and it was not suitable for people of a sensitive disposition.
The trouble with About.com’s warning was that it was on a page designed for 800*600 resolution and the warning was “above the fold” for that resolution. On my 1920*1200 resolution screen the image was dead centre, meaning that their warning was completely useless, and that the majority of users using (1024*768 or 1280*1024) would have seen some part of the image whether they wanted to or not.
This is not a post about email forwards, because these things will happen. This is about a large corporation hosting images which are quite frankly sick and gruesome and also failing to protect users. Just imagining what effect this image would have on a 7 year old child is quite upsetting. If About.com insist on hosting this image at the very least have a blur filter on it until it is clicked and give people the chance to bypass the page. Just guessing people’s screen resolution and putting it below the fold is not good enough. This is lazy web programming and poor customer relations.
Update your Website! (before you get sued)
Posted 06.12.07Accenture - Update your Website
Today’s website that is up for evaluation is that of Accenture. Accenture are one of the largest consultancies in the world and have operations all around the world. Their logo is respected as being one of the best modern corporate identities and by in large they have quite a positive media profile. However, for all their prowess Accenture have dropped the ball on their homepage.
In comparison to most corporate websites, Accenture’s homepage is concise and short. Now while this may appear positive, it is not. Their is no point being short if means you lose context. In the case of the Accenture website, this short homepage is a very poor road map of the corporate website. In some ways it is more reminiscent of a late 90’s splash screen than the shop front of one a large consultancy.
Navigation on this website, is a dog’s breakfast of poor accessibility. The upper left hand side of the screen is screaming for some text links, but text is relegated to a few sundry items at the bottom of the screen. What we have instead is Flash, and lots of it. The primary navigation is not only Flash but DHTML-style dropdown Flash menus. Have these people not heard of accessibility? Frankly I am appalled that a company with no shortage of resources should choose to create a website that shuns the visually impaired. It is not good enough. You might forgive Accenture if they couldn’t afford or if it was beautifully done, but it is neither. Change it!
Give the lack of quality navigation the search box is given quite an amount of prominence, being displayed in isolation at the top of the screen. I reckon it gets used a lot.
This page doesn’t really have much to redeem it. The site is based around an uninspiring and quite poor picture of Tiger Woods. In the way they use Tiger we are meant to presume that Accenture associate them with excellence on a par of Mr. Wood’s golf talent. But why use that image? Why use an image of Tiger seemingly swallowing a wasp rather than with him powerfully striking the ball into the distance. Such an image would convey an ability to deliver on ones’ goals and that of an agile, successful enterprise. instead we get the mental picture of some old guys sitting around, not able to see what the objective is and looking thoroughly miserable.
If I were a prospective client and I wanted a web project to be delivered I would not have any faith in Accenture based on this embarrassing performance.
Accenture you say you know what it takes to be a tiger, how about you actually deliver like Tiger Woods and create the best website you can. Otherwise you might be like the other tiger - on the verge of extinction.
Posted 26.11.07TG4 - Update Your Website
Sometimes you come across websites that have one or two things that need a change. Other times you find that the wrecking ball is the only option. Welcome to the TG4 website - a website that certainly needs the attention of the wrecking ball.
TG4 is the 4th largest television station in Ireland. It deals primarily with Irish language programming. In global terms it is a small TV network but it is not a small little company, it has about 80 employees and safeguards about another 300 jobs in independent production. So for a national broadcaster to have a website such as thing is disgraceful. TV networks have access to some of the finest designers and animators around so why persist with an awful website. Read More
Posted 05.11.07Mirror - Update Your Website
What we see on the web today in terms of graphics, layouts and design owes much to the newspaper industry. The printed media is the grand-daddy of website design and the two are pretty closely linked. The largest newspapers are also the largest journalistic sites on the web. Some are also some of the best looking and influential websites, such as the New York Times.
But newspapers are not perfect and they are also not the fastest to change. Having said that the web has been around long enough now, that all major media outlets should have great websites. Tabloids are different though. They don’t care. They don’t care for journalistic standards, style, information or providing a public service. Advertising income at whatever cost seems like the order of the day.
And so it is with no surprise I stumble upon the cack-handed web presence of the Mirror. The New York Times, it ain’t. The Mirror is an ugly website. A blurred, crammed vision of what a media website should be.
The images are as blurry as the cheap shots they publish in the real newspaper so at least they are consistent. The padding of elements is all over the place, so while vertical padding is fine, the horizontal spacing is too tight. There are some garish colour clashes and font-sizes seemed to have been chosen at random.
There are also too many advertisments on the homepage. These ads follow no particular template and overall produce a dogs breakfast approach to design.
So why am I reviewing a tabloid, should they know better? Yes they should. They are a multi-million pound empire and can well afford a little bit of design work. Furthermore the best part of the real paper - the witty headlines and capitalised impact fonts are not present. They have been forgotten and what is left is just a cheap hodge podge of c.1999 website design.
The owners real need to have a long hard look at themselves in the Mirror.co.uk
Posted 30.10.07Update Your Website - McDonalds (Part 2)
In Part 1 I commented on the poor design evident in the McDonalds Global homepage. Now as I stated a corporate website is a difficult thing to manage, especially with franchisees etc. However, this is not a good enough excuse. It is hard but it must be managed. Corporations should be rewarded because what they do is difficult, not for shirking the hard work. Read More
Posted 25.10.07Update Your Website - McDonalds (Part 1)
Sometimes you come across a website so bad that it takes more than one shot to get out all you want to say. Such is the case with McDonalds. McDonalds is a huge company which has come through a recent storm of criticism quite well. While it is often the easy target for people with a nutritional or anti-globalisation agenda, it never really is the scourge people say it is. There are far worse people on the planet than people who sell you a cheap burger. Read More
PostedUpdate Your Website - Italdesign
As I stated with regard to Goldman Sachs, I’m only concerned with highlighting the sites that really should know better. Today’s target, review is Automotive Design Constultancy, Italdesign Read More
Update Your Website - Goldman Sachs
Following on from my Website Design Classics comes the other side, those sites that are either awful (to come) or those that have got complacent and failed to develop. I don’t intend on knocking the local Hotel or Restaurant, but the big guys. The ones who have big budgets but seem to think the web doesn’t matter. Read More
Posted 18.10.07