Sponge Project Blog ~ Web design in Tewkesbury

News for Tewkesbury is live at last. News for Tewkesbury aims to bring together all of the latest news from different local news services in and around Tewkesbury into one website. See Fun with SimplePie for details on what, why and how.

Apologies if you’ve not been able to access the site recently. I’ve just moved web hosts and it took some time for the domain name to sort itself out.

If you’re interested, my new host is Nearly Free Speech, which is essentially a Pay As You Go host. You only pay for what you use or the traffic you generate. A brave and novel approach to take, but given the current market conditions one that may see more traction. I’ve only been using them for a little while, but overall things seem sound. The site is quite responsive, MySQL is included for $0.01 per day, as is the latest version of PHP. All round very impressed so far.

Apologies for the delay - there’s been a lot going on recently, but here’s part four of Websites for Members of Parliament (MPs) which has us looking at Parmjit Dhanda’s site, Labour MP for Gloucester.

Design

There’s a good use of header imagery adds some colour and dynamism to the site, which is followed through at later points in the site. Images are carefully chosen to be relevant and appropriate and don’t feel as though they’re there just to fill the space.

Use of the title is limited to the title of the page you’re currently on. Ideally it should also have the name of the website, which not only helps with user’s navigation but also search engine optimisation. But at least it has one meaning you know where you are on the site to a degree.

No link on the header image meaning the user has to hunt to find the “Home” navigation item, which isn’t a major issue just a minor frustration.

Cross-browser compatibility is not fully implemented meaning if you’re using Firefox for example, the boxes in the body of the homepage float all over the place rather than align next to or above each other.

Validating the code results in lots of errors, many of which are minor issues resulting from lazy coding. I assume there’s some sort of CMS powering the site, which could explain the coding errors.

Engagement

A blog is available which is very encouraging as it’s engaging and updated regularly, however it’s on a different site which is disappointing. The plus side is that it’s a Wordpress-powered blog so the layout and code is clean as a whistle. A greater level of integration with the main site would be nice to help provide a consistent user experience. Also consideration could be given to using Wordpress to power the whole site.

There’s lots of useful and relevant content aimed at constituents, which is all updated on a fairly regular basis. This shows good attention to the website thereby encouraging repeat visitors.

Accessibility

The site works well with images disable, although the website title is rendered in white text on a white background meaning you lose the readability. Not such a problem if you’re using a screenreader. That said I don’t know if it works properly. Using Fire Vox doesn’t seem to enable a full voice rendition of the website, buit that could be Fire Vox. I suspect however that the website itself is at fault.

Summary

Overall the site is engaging for users, up-to-date and relevant. Some technical deficiencies and a lack of detailed accessibility let the side down somewhat, but I’m happy to give Parmjit Dhanda’s site 4 out of 5 stars.

It’s not all about the web you know, but World Usability Day is still a good thing. Basically it’s all about making life easy for people and this year’s focus is transport.

The Wikipedia definition of usability is:

Usability is a term used to denote the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object in order to achieve a particular goal. Usability can also refer to the methods of measuring usability and the study of the principles behind an object’s perceived efficiency or elegance.

Notice how the definition is broad enough to encompass all things we interact with, not just websites, but telephones, doors, signs or books. The topic of transport usability is an interesting one, because most of us use some form of transport every single day. Most of the stuff we use we take for granted, but when you stop and think about it sometimes they’re so intuitive we just use it. That is the secret to usability.

Sadly only UK based event so far is in Edinburgh. Let’s hope more will come.

1. Whorepresents - A site called ?Who Represents? where you can find the name of the agent that represents a celebrity. Their domain name? wait for it? is whorepresents.com.
2. Expertsexchange - Experts Exchange, a knowledge base where programmers can exchange advice and views at expertsexchange.com.
3. Penisland - Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at penisland.net.
4. Therapistfinder - Need a therapist? Try Therapist Finder at therapistfinder.com.
5. Powergenitalia - Then of course, there?s the Italian Power Generator company? powergenitalia.com.
6. Molestationnursery - And now, we have the Mole Station Native Nursery, based in New South Wales: molestationnursery.com.
7. Ipanywhere - If you?re looking for computer software, there?s always ipanywhere.com.
8. cummingfirst - Welcome to the First Cumming Methodist Church. Their website is cummingfirst.com.
9. speedofart - Then, of course, there?s these brainless art designers, and their whacky website: speedofart.com.
10. gotahoe - Want to holiday in Lake Tahoe? Try their brochure website at gotahoe.com.

I got these from an email at work, which no doubt came form another website, but don’t know the source.