Ugh. More webmaster arrogance... Its front page is absolutely awful! It might be aesthetically appealing, but it's a practical and functional nightmare. Requiring Internet Explorer is understandable; and the arrogance of it is, nevertheless, supported by the statistics... but it's an idea that, generally speaking, tends to be dumber than it is smart. Requiring the Flash player, however -- or, more specifically -- making the site so flash media intensive (or, worse, Java-intensive) is just a huge mistake. As is common of humans, generally, webmasters who have high-speed, broadband connections to the Internet (T1, DSL, cable modem, etc.) tend to project onto the rest of the world their good fortune. Despite the claims of ubiquity made by broadband providers, it remains an incontrovertible fact that the vast majority of the world accesses the Internet via traditional 56Kbps modems and dial-up connections... most of which rarely achieve even 40K's-worth of actual modem speed. For such users, web pages like Erskine Seminary's new front page are all about excruciating waiting; and having one's time wasted; and herky-jerky flash playback... just to name three infirmities... and there are many more. The really [/i]smart[/i] web site makers who want to show-off their multimedia skills (which, sadly, is usually all multimedia-heavy web sites are typically about) will always still design for the least common denominator (i.e., those with dial-up connections)... or, even better yet, produce three (3) versions (if possible) of each site: A version best suited to broadband connections which contains all the fancy, shmancy flash and multimedia stuff; and, A more traditional version designed with dial-up users in mind and which contains perfectly lovely colors and graphics, but which relies heavily on a vast repertoire of bandwidth-conserving tricks that reduse graphic file size and, therefore, speeds the rate at which said graphics -- along with the rest of the web page -- paints on the screen; and, A text-only version for those using graphic-incapable browsers; or for the sight impaired; or for those who just want to have the words -- and not alot of time-wasting (and screen space wasting) graphics -- paint on their screens so they can just get right to it.[/list=1]The second most frustrating thing, generally, about the state of current web site design -- to me, at least -- is the near criminal lack of sensible usability. In an effort to be creative and unique and whatever else the web designer thinks s/he's supposed to be being, a rational and intuitive navigational structure that doesn't need to be stared-at for a few minutes to figure out somehow gets lost -- usually replaced by something that may make sense to the convoluted mind of the designer, but which just puts-off finicky and impatient site visitors. Web designers, generally, should be ever-mindful of the body of studies that have been done since the Web's beginning in 1994 (yes... it's amazing, isn't it: the web's only 11 years old); and which, therefore, are now mature and meaningful. One very important finding of an mid- to late-90s study -- and which more recent studies find has not changed one bit -- that I always keep in mind is that from the moment a person either presses the keyboard's Enter key, or clicks on the browser's "Go" button, after typing a web site's URL into its "Address:" field, the web site owner can count on may be 8 to, at the very most, 20 seconds of the site visitor's patience; and that, by and large, if the site doesn't completely paint on the screen so that the visitor can successfully begin reading and clicking on things, said visitor will, more often than not, just leave. Web pages like Erskine Seminary's new front page just invite users who don't have broadband (either because they just won't spend the money or; as is the case more often than not, because it's simply not available in their geographic) to leave before the page even finishes painting. That's, in part, why flash-loving web site designers who bother to read the studies have, to their credit, added a "Skip Intro" button or link -- usually near the lower right-hand part of the flash playback area -- so that those who either don't want their web sites to be like TV, or who just want to get to the meat of it and don't need to be entertained along the way, can, in fact, do so. Finally, graphic-heavy web sites -- especially those that actually use Flash imagery as part of the site's navigation and who don't, therefore, have the navigational links duplicated somewhere on the page (usually near the bottom) in good, old-fashioned text -- will never achieve high search engine placement. Search engine spiders don't even like Javascript, much less Java or Flash. Aside from the fact that such technologies are unreadable to search engine spiders, they also bloat the size of the web page. Bloated web pages, in addition to being slow-painting on the screen, can also shoot themselves in the foot with search engines because of most search engines' size cutoffs. Google, for example, doesn't read or index very much beyond the 100K point of a typical web page. Though pages bloated by multimedia won't necessaruily fall victim to the size cutoff problem (ostensibly because said multimedia is usually not actually in the web page but, rather, is merely linked-to therefrom), the huge and hundreds-of-thousands-of-characters-long text-only pages -- as are so often found on university web sites -- don't get much of their content crawled by search engine spiders and, therefore, said content beyond the roughly 100K limit is just ignored. If someone puts his/her entire thesis or dissertation on a single HTML page -- as we so often see on the Web -- and then if s/he happens to make his/her groundbreaking point beyond the point of the roughly one hundred thousanth character, said groundbreaking point it will never show-up on Google -- unless maybe it happens, also, to be in said web page's header, in the "description" META tag or something like that. And none of the above addresses the problem of web pages which rely too heavily on such things as Javascript, Java, Flash or Active-X, but which are visited by people who perceive those technologies as vehicles for malicious viruses, worms and spyware and, therefore, have all those technologies turned-off in their browsers. And I won't go there, at this time, either. Of all the things I've talked about in this flying short course on web site design, USABILITY is probably the most important single thing that, if I were king of the world, I'd want every web designer (or anyone aspiring thereto) to fully grasp. And the quickest way that I can think of to do that is to not just read, but to devour nearly every word of this web site. Bear in mind that that site's author -- as right about usability, generally, as I promise you he is -- is, nevertheless, a bit of an anti-graphics purist. There is a way to have somewhat more graphics than he advises in your web site, but without disregarding the essential elements of usability that he professes. That's how I design sites. And, in keeping with my lowest-common-denominator theory, I test every site I build on an old 400 MHz computer with Windows 95 and a dial-up connection. If its pages don't fully paint on that machine in 8 to 12 seconds (or less), I consider myself to have screwed-up. But that's just me. In closing, after my having taken such swipes at Erskine's new site, I should, in fairness, point out that once one gets past that godawful opening page -- a page, I should point out, that would not do well with search engines and is, therefore, a bit self-defeating in terms of attracting new visitors -- the site actually ain't half bad. And I congratulate them, in any case, on an effort that, notwithstanding its aforementioned infirmities, is an improvement, generally.
ADDENDUM I was in such a terrible hurry to finish my above posting so that I could take a call that came in before I had really finished it -- or made my one quick edit to it -- that I really screwed-up spelling and grammar in a place or two. Left out one word altogether; and used a closing italics tag ([/i]) where an opening one belonged. Sheesh! So I say to the reader: Please accept my apologies. I'd edit the post and correct everything... except that now the 10 minute timeout on that has expired, so I'm left to this addendum. Additionally, as long as I have the floor again for a few seconds, it occurs to me that someone at Erskine might happen to read my post, above, and agree with me (ego aside, it has been known to happen) and, thereafter, change the site accordingly. As the above posting ages into this web site's archives, someone may read the above, go look at Erskine's site after it has implemented changes pursuant to my posting, above, and the visitor may say to himself/herself, "What? I don't see what the heck that DesElms idiot is talking about!" (Something that more than one person in this lifetime has said, I might add... but I digress.) So I now caution the reader that all that I have written, above, about the new Erskine site applies to said site as of the approximately 7:00 PM PDT hour, on Monday, April 11th, 2005. After that, the reader's pretty much on his/her own.
To either Erskine's, or Firefox's, credit... depending on how you look at it. Looking around the site I found another fatal flaw: If the schools physical address is anywhere on the site, it's certainly not easily found. When a new visitor to the site can't quickly determine where on the planet the school is located, then something's terribly wrong. The tradition of having an "About Us" item is also ignored... though getting that information in other ways is not rocket science. This site wreaks of having been built by an insider who, like most insiders, assumes much about the site visitor's pre-visit knowledge and understanding. I refuse to do a full critique, though... unless Erskine would like to send me a check (for which I won't hold my breath).
Re: Ugh. More webmaster arrogance... Hmm. Too direct, maybe, then... eh? Were that it were the first time I've been asked -- with well-meaning sarcasm, of course -- to say what I really mean. Any takers on a bet regarding whether it will be the last?
Erskine College, located in Due West, South Carolina is a small private college ....from my understanding has a fine reputation, but then again I live in SC Gavin
Indeed it does! Erskine Seminary (RA/ATS), the seminary of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian church, has been in existence for over 170 years. However, as a graduate of Erskine's doctoral program (1996), it could be I am somewhat biased.
Stating the obvious Thank you, but I didn't say I didn't know where it was, for godsake; or that no mention of Due West or South Carolina, or both, could be found on the site. Rather, I'm saying that any good webmaster should never presume that the typical visitor to his/her site will know a darned thing about his/her site's subject matter. The site should have I believe it was in the movie Philadelphia when Denzel Washington's character talked about having someone explain something to him like he was a three-year-old. Web sites, generally speaking, need to approach their task from precisely that perspective: Like the site visitor is a three-year-old... but, of course, using adult language. The Erskine Seminary webmaster (assuming that's the person who built the site) and, no doubt, every single person on faculty and/or staff who vetted his/her work, is so a part of Erskine and so knows where it's located that, I'm virtually certain, it never even occurred to any of them that they would so need to take the site visitor by the hand on any of the site's "contact" pages and spell-out in painful detail such mundane bits of information as their street address. They didn't do it out of malice, I'm virtually certain. Rather, they were just too close to the project. They should have had someone on the outside produce the site... or, if they did do that, then they should have found someone with more experience and a larger world view. Every site like Erskine Seminary's should have a clear and unambiguous "About Us" page; and, given the navigational scheme implemented on the Erskine site, said page should be alongside the other horizontal links near the top of the page -- probably to the left of "Academics," but to the right of the (currently non-existent) "Home" link that should be leftmost on the horizontal menu bar there. Additionally, at the far right of that very same horizontal menu bar should be a "Contact Us" menu item. The "Home" items should not link the user to the aforementioned, Flash-media-heavy home page but, rather, to some kind of main page that's more like the rest of the site's pages in overall look and feel. Whether they would also want to make the my recommended "About Us" and "Contact Us" items drop down to submenus, as the other items on that horizontal menu bar do, would be up to them. I would argue, however, that it would certainly make some sense if they did. The "About Us" dropdown menu, for example, could have submenu items on it like, "History" or "Accreditation" etc.; and the "Contact Us" dropdown menu could have a general contacts submenu item that links to a page containing just a general switchboard phone number to the school, and its address, and a generic "[email protected]" email address... and the webmaster's email address, too. That same page could also have links to other departmental departmental contacts pages... or not. It would be up to them. The "Contact Us" pulldown, menu, however, would have links to all departmental contact pages. And in the case of all contact pages, not just email addresses and/or phone number should be shown, but the formal, official, U.S. Postal Service (snailmail) address of the seminary, generally, and the department should be shown, too. I should add that no "Contact Us" link anywhere on any page should launch one email client, like the "Contact Us" item at the bottom of each page Erskine Seminary's site currently does. That's just bad form -- and ticks-off users who click on it thinking that they're going to be taken to a contacts page and who, instead, end-up feeling ambused by having their email client being launched (another huge time-waster, by the way, if their machine is old and/or slow and their email client is the behemoth Outlook or Outlook Express). This is called "email link shock," and it's a terrible thing for a webmaster to do to a site visitor. As long as we're talking about ambush and shock... web sites, generally, should never have any of their core or base content as PDF files. Mind you, it's not that PDF files should never be used; it's just that no one should ever click on a link that any reasonable person would assume is going to take them to a normal HTML page and, instead, causes their Adobe Acrobat Reader to be launched. We call this "PDF shock." All .PDF links should always be clearly labeled as such by either putting "(PDF)" to the right of every text link, or putting a small PDF link graphic there. And, of course, any page with any links to PDF files should always have a clickable "Get the Acrobat Reader" graphic on it which, when clicked upon, takes the visitor (in a new browser window) to the page on the Adobe web site where they can begin the download process. Actually, personally, I believe that clicking on the "Get the Acrobat Reader" should also be in text, beneath the graphic; and instead of taking the visitor directly to the Adobe web site it should first take the visitor to a page on -- in this case, the Erskine -- site that explains to the reader, that the Acrobat download free and safe and that if it's not already on the visitor's computer then it should be; and then explains the download and installation process and how it's going to require that the user reboot his/her machine... which will mean reconnecting to the Internet and then re-launching one's web browser, and then navigating back to this web site... all in all, a major pain in the ass! And then if they still wish to continue, they can be linked from there to the Adobe web site to begin (the pain of) it. So, that's why I say that PDF files should not be used on web sites unless absolutely necessary. Everything should be in HTML. Period. And .DOC files (Microsoft Word files) should never be used, no matter what... but now I'm digressing within my digression. Back to PDF: Only documents whose look and feel must be maintained when printed should be in the form of PDF files. But that's just me. Companies and universities do it so often, usually, because no one in the department that's preparing the document in question knows diddly about turning it into HTML pages (and the webmaster wouldn't let them near the site to do so in any case). With educational sites, we usually see this sort of thing with course catalogs. On accreditor's sites, it's usually with policy (see ACICS's site). They also do it because it's just so darned easy to just print the course catalog or policy or whatever it is right from the desktop publishing or word processing software they're using to the PDF writer (a print driver that creates a PDF file out of whatever they just finished working on). Then they just email it to the webmaster who, also being lazy, just uploads it to the web site and creates a link to it instead of taking the time to convert whatever's in said PDF document to HTML. This is a huge irritant for me whenever I see it... but, again, that's just me. But I digress. We were, I believe, talking about the Erskine Seminary web site's horizontal menu bar... Furthermore, those major navigational items on the aforementioned horizontal menu bar should also be duplicated as old-fashioned text links across the bottom of every single page... something like this: Home | About Us | Academics | Prospective Students Current Students | Alumni | Media & Publications | Contact Us Copyright | Privacy Policy | Terms of use Contact the Webmaster Copyright © 2005 by Erskine College. All rights reserved. Use by permission only. But with each line, above, centered, of course, at the very, absolute bottommost part of each and every page of the site. And note that I went ahead and added "Home" and "About Us" and "Contact Us;" along with "Privacy Policy" and "Copyright" and "Terms of Use." Those last three things are absolutely essential for every web site, no matter whose it is or for what purpose it was created -- even if it's a personal site. And the word "Copyright" in "Copyright © 2005 by Erskine College" would link to the very same page that the word "Copyright" just two lines above it would link to. This is just Web Site Basics 101, folks. No rocket science here. That they launched this new site with the infirmities that I've cited here is unconscionable. That said, I've seen companies and non-profit and educational institutions do it hundreds of times. Lots of people fancy themselves web designers. Very few actually are. Most companies, non-profits and educational institutions don't know how to tell the difference... ...so they end-up with a site like Erskine's. Pity. [sigh] (Looks like I critiqued anyway, didn't I... and without holding out for a check! Maybe I can trade 'em a graduate certificate in something-or-another for all this work!) [grin]
Re: Stating the obvious Perhaps someone should contact both SACS and ATS! This could indeed be cause for accreditation probation...............
Canny Scots--cantankerous, too (a good thing). Just for the record: The ARP Church is NOT a splinter group off of the big Pres Church USA; it simply refused for confessional reasons to git et up in mergers. Billy Graham started out ARP but then acculturated big time.
Wow Erskine needs to know all of this info, we would hate for their reputation to end up being as credible as a Hopi rain maker during a prolonged drought! -Gavin
Uncle, Just a little pun, you're my buddy, nothing was directed towards you! I was just fishing for another lengthy response, hoping to get one hooked, gafted and clubbed! Seriously, I really dont think Erskine's reputation is in decline over web site snafu's nor based on how some people perceive their web site. Back to chumming the waters! Best, Gavin
Why dance around it? Which, unless understood, and/or really is a pun, is ineffective... which is apparently okay with you, if your lame attempt at it is any indicator. So, then, you were directing at me. Fine. Why not properly use this forum's quote feature so the reader can tell? So whatever controversy derives from it would just be sport for you, then, is that about right? You don't have anything better to do than to taunt me because you don't happen to take what I've written here seriously -- which, incidentally, is your right, of course -- but, if so, what possible good purpose would picking a fight over it serve? Your ego? What? I'm confused. No one ever said it was. Moreover, I'm quite certain that it isn't -- or that anyone from Erskine or its seminary will give a damn, in any case. It's quite common for web site owners to be satisfied with mere closeness to the mark. And most of them never realize it because they'll never know how many site visitors -- potential students, in this case, one and all -- lost interest and went away because said site was too much of a pain in their asses to use. And that's fine. If that's good enough for Erskine, then it's good enough for me. I was just trying to help. Why that bothers you, I don't know... or particularly care. Either way, however, let me make one thing clear that I may have left the reader to wonder about in my previous posts: Erskine Seminary's new site, overall, is very nice. It's a big improvement over its previous site, and it's something of which its creator may be justly proud. But it is not without some not-insignificant problems which I was simply trying to point out. I see -- and am, about a half dozen times a year, paid many hundreds or even thousands of dollars to see on other sites -- a few problems with Erskine's that I, as a fan of Erskine Seminary, just wanted to get out there on the table in case anyone wanted to do something about it. In the process, as a totally secondary consideration, I figured more than one person reading here might actually learn something that they could use on their own sites. That you would never have done such a thing; and, moreover, that you think I'm stupid (or so it seems) because I did, says more about you than it does about me. Careful. Some around here consider that sort of behavior trollish.
Erskine Looks great doesn't it Russell. My brother should finish there with his DMin in a few months, and my wife has narrowed her DMin studies down to Erskine or Asbury. I'm very blessed to be a graduate there myself (91). It's such a beautiful little place, with some of the most gracious people I've ever known. --Paul
