Department of Not Getting It

[vakkotaur]

Those who, for whatever reason, look at this LiveJournal account directly rather than just through their friends list will see that I keep a few links handy on the left side of the page. Most of these are for LiveJournal itself and do what the navbar tries to do, but does it better and without being so annoying. A couple are for renfaires. With all that the positive stuff I had to say about the Wisconsin Renaissance Faire, it might be wondered why I don't have a link to the WiRF web site. Simple: bad design.

At first I had no WiRF link as I didn't know if it would be any good and, if javascript wasn't enabled the site would automatically redirect to a non-existent page and generate a 404 error. For a while last week that had been fixed. Not having javascript on would result getting a page without the fancy menu, but a web site map link worked and the links on the web site map also worked like standard HTML should.

Not anymore. Someone "fixed" it. They fixed it alright, in the veterinary sense of fixed. The redirect is back, and using the web site map link leads to... the same redirect. All this stupid insistence on using javascript for an effect that adds nothing to the site content is surprising from otherwise really competent folks. A set of simple HTML links, or even image links (with ALT text would ideal), would suffice. Effects could be done with CSS if need be. At least CSS "fails gracefully" - it might not look "just so" but the functions still work.

It's sad that WiRF, which seems to have gotten everything else so very right, has gotten this so very wrong. I'd like to put a WiRF link up, but I utterly refuse to link to a broken or BAD (Broken As Designed) web site. For comparison, look at Siouxland and the Amana Colonies Renaissance Faire web sites which do everything they need to do without making senseless and rude and demands on the viewer to adjust any browser settings.

Comments

[foolscap001.livejournal.com]

OK...I looked at the source of the WiRF home page.

Good Lord. (And that's a strong statement coming from an atheist.) What the bleep did they think they were doing?

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

My suspicion is a "kewl web design tool" was used as I can't see anyone intentionally writing something that bad, other than perhaps as an example of things not to do. Kewl sucks.