Copper's Website Comments

On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 at 00:27 GMT, ant penned:

I agree. I use a 16mb of RAM laptop, on a rural modem connection, so
Flash is anathema to me, I really hate it. I always assume the people
who built the site must be techos, who assume everyone has state of
the art gear. Actually, I think people who put Flash on the front of
anything haven't even thought about who will use the site. I think
Flash is fair enough on corporate sites where other users are
corporate, or techo sites where the users will be techos.


I am a "techo", I guess, with a fast connection and fast computer ...
and I still hate flash crap. I shouldn't have to jump through hoops to
get information about a product/service/resort etc. I should be able to
link directly to your page on bindings, or on ticket prices, etc. Flash
means that you can never optimize your visit by bookmarking the places
you visit most.

Flash belongs on web-based games, maybe, and that's about it. For
general-purpose information distribution, plain html is the way to go.


--
monique
PLEASE don't CC me. Please. Pretty please with sugar on top.
Whatever it takes, just don't CC me! I'm already subscribed!!

ant wrote:

The Real Bev wrote:

The best use of flash I've seen so far is the bubblewrap page.

I think it's like when word processors first came out, and people had to try
and use every single font in one document!

I never did that, but I'll confess to using proportional right
justification far longer than I should have. Anybody who has ever done
that by hand on a typewriter will understand.

Flash is there, therefore they
HAVE to use it. I'd love to hear their justification for using it, beyond
that.
The challenge for any web designer is to come up with something
beautiful/attractive, that suits the site users, keeps them at the site,
enables them to find everything they want and to want everything on it.

I think the only users who like Flash are kids with time on their hands, and
web designers who use it to impress corporate types at the site presentation
in some darkened conference room.

Well, I did my bit for the cause. I emailed the web designers for the
Big Bear ski site telling them exactly that, and cc'ing the Big Bear ski
people. Maybe I sould have done it the other way around...

--
Cheers,
Bev
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
"The language of victimization is infinitely extensible." -- Me

On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 10:57:26 CST, Sam Seiber
wrote:

AstroPax wrote:
Yea, well I have a *negative* comment:

As soon as the dialog for the Flash Install popped-up, I exited.

I hate that useless and unnecessary crap.

What I just can't understand is why a Commercial web site (a
site trying to sell something) demands bleeding edge browsers
to see properly. If _I_ built a website that was trying to
generate revenue, I would design it so the _maximum_ possible
of browsers out there could see it. But that is just my
opinion. I could be wrong. Maybe Coppers target customer
is the person who is _constantly_ upgrading this and that
on their computer.

Or who runs Opera; their site loads nice and clean for me. A few
needless motion graphic gewgaws here and there, but no popups or
anything gettin' in my face....

bw

On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 18:31:54 CST, "ant"
wrote:

I think the only users who like Flash are kids with time on their hands, and
web designers who use it to impress corporate types at the site presentation
in some darkened conference room.

I think the people wearing the suits, the ones upstairs, look at a
competitors flashed/over-graphically challenged web site via a high
speed connection, think to themselves "wow, that's neat, why doesn't
ours look so good?" Then they call downstairs to the IT department
and tell the geek webmaster to make their web site look just as cool
as the other guys.

Kind of like a "keeping up with the Jones's" mentality.

-Astro

In article ,
Monique Y. Herman wrote:

So, it seems to me that one really good fix would be tons of people
emailing the contact point of the website and saying, look, I hate your
site. It's unusable. Make it conform to reasonable, basic web
standards, or at least give me that *option*.

I could do that, and I'm all for being a cranky old ******* when
appropriate, but there are only so many hours in the day. I prefer to
devote my limited crankiness to worthy causes like restaurants that have
music that's so loud you can't talk without yelling, or to the people
(restaurauteurs, tavern owners, airport managers) that feel that you need
to have a television set staring back at you every waking minute.
Compared to those ills, a crappy ski area web site is rather easily
avoided, especially since they aren't selling Copper cards to us out of
staters this year.

The problem, in my paranoid mind, is that the contact person is the very
person who is least likely to want to suggest a basic web site, since
then their expertise will be unnecessary.

Actually, they might be a bit more responsive than that. Last year I
signed up for the ski report email and started getting email that
contained a link to the ski report. I wrote back and suggested that if I
subscribed to a ski report, that I expected to see ski reports in my
email. I think they fixed it, but I've since switched ISPs and haven't
resubscribed. Besides, not having a Copper card this year, their ski
report has become significantly less interesting than it's been in past
years.



--
---
Eric Holeman Chicago Illinois USA

On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 at 04:05 GMT, Eric Holeman penned:
In article , Monique Y.
Herman wrote:

So, it seems to me that one really good fix would be tons of people
emailing the contact point of the website and saying, look, I hate
your site. It's unusable. Make it conform to reasonable, basic web
standards, or at least give me that *option*.

I could do that, and I'm all for being a cranky old ******* when
appropriate, but there are only so many hours in the day. I prefer to
devote my limited crankiness to worthy causes like restaurants that
have music that's so loud you can't talk without yelling, or to the
people (restaurauteurs, tavern owners, airport managers) that feel
that you need to have a television set staring back at you every
waking minute. Compared to those ills, a crappy ski area web site is
rather easily avoided, especially since they aren't selling Copper
cards to us out of staters this year.

So many worthy causes; so little time. My current pet peeve is
html-formatted mailing lists. It's amazing how many times I've
registered a complaint/inquiry about the possibility of receiving the
mailing list in plain text, only to be told that it's impossible for
them to offer a plain text version.

The problem, in my paranoid mind, is that the contact person is the
very person who is least likely to want to suggest a basic web site,
since then their expertise will be unnecessary.

Actually, they might be a bit more responsive than that. Last year I
signed up for the ski report email and started getting email that
contained a link to the ski report. I wrote back and suggested that
if I subscribed to a ski report, that I expected to see ski reports in
my email. I think they fixed it, but I've since switched ISPs and
haven't resubscribed. Besides, not having a Copper card this year,
their ski report has become significantly less interesting than it's
been in past years.


Yes, but in the case you describe, the web maintainers won't get canned
for including the ski report in the email. They may very well get
canned if they were hired for their flash skills, and those skills are
no longer desired.

--
monique
PLEASE don't CC me. Please. Pretty please with sugar on top.
Whatever it takes, just don't CC me! I'm already subscribed!!

Chester Bullock wrote in message ...
Not at all Sam. They just don't have a clue (the marketing folks) and
they are listening to someone who pretty much only does stuff in Flash,
where that person's hourly rate can be higher, and the client is trapped
into depending on him for everything. They have been using Factory
pretty much since I stopped being involved with their site, which was
roughly a year after I stopped working there (I was still doing work for
them as a consultant after my move to Denver). The switch in website
philosophy happened when Marketing took over from IT. As I stated on
their message board, people came to our site to get information. And I
made sure it was easy to find. That has changed quite a bit. Patrick
at Loveland still hasn't gotten over the 'gee-whiz' factor of various
things, and definitely doesn't subscribe to the 'less-is-more' theory of
design. But overall you can tell he is an IT guy, because the pertinent
info is readily accessible. I used to do site work for Loveland before
their marketing guy headed south to Durango. Scott Fortner is one of
the few that actually gets it...

Yeah, the site is pretty bad. Have you checked out the
factorylabs.com site. After looking at their site, I can't believe
they went with those guys. Talk about all flash and no content.
Plus, it takes forever to load and I have a high speed connection. It
must be useless over dial up.

As long as we're on the website subject, what do you think of one I
have been working on. http://www.christysports.com

OB Skiing: Got about 6" on my deck here in Breck and it's been snowing
off and on all day. Not sure if this will stick around but it will
help out the piles of machine made snow that have just been melting
the last two days. There should finally be enough snow up on Bross to
make a few turns once it clears.

snoig

snoig wrote:

Yeah, the site is pretty bad. Have you checked out the
factorylabs.com site. After looking at their site, I can't believe
they went with those guys. Talk about all flash and no content.
Plus, it takes forever to load and I have a high speed connection. It
must be useless over dial up.

Factory's site really hasn't changed much since they first unveiled it.
Somebody had it right, it's just a gee-whiz thing for the suits to be
impressed by. Real people couldn't care less about the flash crap.

As long as we're on the website subject, what do you think of one I
have been working on. http://www.christysports.com


Looks like a good start. Congrats on getting that gig. Do you own your
company, or are you working for someone else? You should get a copy of
Eric Meyer on CSS and see how to best redesign that site to fully
support standards.

--
Chester Bullock,
Ethical, custom website hosting, design and programming
Tenxible Solutions, http://www.tenxible.com
Web Based Autoresponder and DRIP system, http://www.toolsre.com
AIM: tenxible YahooIM: ccb247

On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 at 16:39 GMT, snoig penned:
As long as we're on the website subject, what do you think of one I
have been working on. http://www.christysports.com


Without having looked too closely, or examined how you're doing your
layout, it looks pretty good. I personally think that you should ditch
anything that moves, which means changing the buttons on the left.
Also, the slightly-3d with a little shine on one corner thing makes the
site look outdated, as those were popular a few years ago. I like the
T-Shirts, Hats, and Accessories button best -- flat, easy to read.
Just make it stop moving =)

My 2 cents.

--
monique
PLEASE don't CC me. Please. Pretty please with sugar on top.
Whatever it takes, just don't CC me! I'm already subscribed!!

Chester Bullock wrote:
Not at all Sam. They just don't have a clue (the marketing folks) and
they are listening to someone who pretty much only does stuff in Flash,
where that person's hourly rate can be higher, and the client is trapped
into depending on him for everything.

I am starting to get it. Flash guy makes site all "pretty". Marketing
stooge views site (at local network speed), and thinks cool. Stooge
never thinks of any real skiier questions the site is supposed to
answer, so never notices missing/very hard to find content. Marketing
stooge is all glossed over by the flash graphics.

Patrick
at Loveland still hasn't gotten over the 'gee-whiz' factor of various
things, and definitely doesn't subscribe to the 'less-is-more' theory of
design.

While there are some design problems with Lovelands site, I have to
hand it to them, the answers are there (as long as you use a browser
that will render their menu bar). Their snowmaking updates early
season get me thinking about getting up on their hill for some
smile turns. They kept their web cam running all summer. It is
something I monitor at work, cuz I can!

Sam "Still on a rant about web site design. What ever happened to
KISS?" Seiber