[Chapter-delegates] Our New Site Has Launched
Klaus Birkenbihl
Klaus.Birkenbihl at Isoc.de
Sun Dec 18 06:01:48 PST 2011
Dear all,
I took a second glance and sorry to say this: it is not only
"a few items that need to be addressed" but severe issues that
should have be addressed before release. These are mainly in
three areas:
1. As lined out below, the new site breaks the Web. Bad if it
is the "Internet Society" who does it. You are not alone in
space! There are people who learn about ISOC by subscribing to
http://www.isoc.org/headlines/rss.php . They even didn't get a
notice that there is a new release of the Website cause it was
not disseminated on this feed. Neither
you can read it in places where the feed is sydicated like
http://www.isoc.de/ or to mention a company site
http://www.ict-media.de/. People may use feed burners that in
turn use it as input. Same holds for documents: people
have bookmarked things. Any concept how to fix it? Redirect
for all old document URIs as soon as the document is moved?
For what its worth - this is how the Web works and its sad
that it is ISOC that didn't take care.
Even worse (as said below) http://www.internetsociety.org/rss
says "Find our more about RSS feeds and how you can use them
to keep up-to-date on Internet Society activities (LINK)"
But there is nothing to find.
By the way: the homepage contains a line
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
title="Internet Society RSS"
href="http://www.internetsociety.org/rss.xml" />
but http://www.internetsociety.org/rss.xml cannot be accessed.
2. Accessibility. "The Internet is for Everyone". Is the Web
part of it? Let's agree on "yes". Two important instruments
to make the Internet for everyone are accessibility and
internationalization. While full internationalization can
be tricky and is hardly to achieve (though there are some good
instruments in place) accessibility is relatively easy. There
are well accepted standards around that provide requirements
and criteria. The most famous are from section 508 or more
specific the WCAC 1 or WCAC 2 from W3C. ISOC does great in
teaching the world on accessibility. Events like INET Sri Lanka
earlier this year address the topic. Many Governments and public
institutions all over the world are legally obliged to conform
to at least to a certain level of accessibility (as of today
mostly base on WCAG 1). So what about ISOC itself? Would it be
fair to ask what level of accessibility you aim for? Please
let me know.
3. Internationalization. Go to the home page. Click on
"繁體中文" (traditional Chinese). Surprise: shows you the home
page in simplified Chinese. Click on "become a member"
brings you back to English, hm. But in the main menu
you get an offer for "繁體中文" (traditional Chinese). Click.
the address bar now changes to http://46.43.36.213/zh-hant/...
what!? Content is "加入互联网社区" (meaning "how to join" in
simplified Chinese). The page hold two underlined texts:
"了解更多" (more) and "现在加入" (join now). Would you assume a
link? Everybody would. Click it. Nothing happens. Inspect
the element (look at the source). It says: "<u>了解更多</u>"
hu? Nice trap (export control?). Click on "home". Shows
the home page in simplified Chinese. URI is
http://46.43.36.213/zh-hant. Click on "English". Home page
in English. Address bar shows you the URI: http://46.43.36.213/.
Littlish things only? But quite a few. And there is more about
internationalization. But other than for accessibility there
are rather not many standards or levels that can be applied
directly. But HTML provides some help and the community
provides best practices. It might be a good idea to make
good use of it.
I assume "Internet Society" should be committed to Website
quality beyond a wow-generating layout. A few more topics
than the ones above should have be addressed in this context:
e.g what about semantics or meta-data? The events calendar for
example doesn't hold any. Would increase the re-usability and
value significantly. Not much meta on the home page. (Search
engines will cry!)
Enough for today! I don't even know if you want to read it
(and I usually get paid for giving this kind of advice).
Klaus
Klaus Birkenbihl wrote on 2011-12-16 17:41:
> Sorry, I was obviously also a bit fast in releasing this.
> Missed to mention the URI for TimBL's quote metioned below:
> http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html
> Sorry for sending twice ...
>
>
> Klaus Birkenbihl wrote on 2011-12-16 17:29:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> would it be appropriate to join to chorus of acclamations?
>> Those of you who are in this business know that judging the quality
>> of a Website is more than just checking the design and following
>> a few links. So for now: congrats, yes its looking great.
>>
>> A few question already pop-up now:
>> - first of all (and I saw a contribution of my ISOC.DE board fellow
>> Peter Koch on this) who had this absolutely crazy idea to change
>> URI? I mean having internetsociety.org as an alternate would be OK.
>> But changing the URI is ...
>> I should abstain from insults and be constructive. So what did you
>> do with the Web developer (I hope you had one), who reminded you on
>> the implications of such a change, who maybe referred you to an
>> article of Tim-Berners Lee from 1998 that gives damned good reasons
>> not to do so - in your own interest.
>>
>> - A bit of related: ISOC.DE proudly syndicates news from the ISOC
>> website. As do many other chapters and maybe others too. To have
>> some advance alert on the change of the RSS feed would have been
>> nice. But stop: there isn't any? Clicking RSS leads you to a page
>> containing
>> "Find our more about RSS feeds and how you can use them to keep
>> up-to-date on Internet Society activities (LINK)"
>> I assume you mean
>> "Find out ...".
>> Anyhow there is nothing to find (2011-12-15 15:18 UTC) out - no
>> link no nothing. So many places in the world still syndicate -as we
>> do- the old outdated feed at http://www.isoc.org/headlines/rss.php.
>> Can you imagine a better organized transition?
>>
>> - Internationalisation of the page is a mess. It is absolutely
>> unpredictable what you will see when you click on the
>> link for another language. A bit tricky to resolve properly but
>> well ISOC - sorry the Internet Society Claims to be an international
>> organization. So if you do internationalisation links should produce
>> predictable results.
>> Minor issue: for somebody who has come a bit to age and is not a
>> native English speaker the teasers on the homepage change way too
>> fast. To have to stop it by mouse over this is not very accessible.
>>
>> So congrats again and best wishes for fixing issues faster than they
>> pop-up.
>>
>> Good luck, enjoy your holidays and have a successful 2012 for the
>> wealth of ISOC.
>>
>> Klaus
>>
>>
>> Dan Graham wrote on 2011-12-15 16:44:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> Our new site has launched! Check it out: www.internetsociety.org
>>> <http://www.internetsociety.org> (depending on where you are in the
>>> world, you may still see the old site for the time being. If so, keep
>>> checking).
>>>
>>> Needless to say that this has been a huge project, and as I've said
>>> before, this only the beginning - not the end:
>>>
>>> * As with any new website launch, there will be a few items that
>>> need to be addressed such as broken links, formatting issues,
>>> bugs...etc. Please bear with us as we iron out these issues over
>>> the next few days.
>>> * We will continue to migrate content, add pictures and videos...etc
>>> to the new site over the coming days (after all, a website is
>>> never really "finished").
>>> * At the moment, there's only a small amount of multilingual pages.
>>> More will be added throughout the day and tomorrow as our
>>> translators needed to do some final proofreading given some last
>>> minute changes.
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks to all of you who provided your valuable time, ideas and
>>> guidance throughout this process!
>>>
>>> As mentioned, if you have feedback, ideas or questions about the site,
>>> please contact us using: webfeedback at isoc.org
>>> <mailto:webfeedback at isoc.org>
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Dan
>>>
>>> PS: I'll be in touch with you soon about templates.
>>>
>>> Dan Graham
>>> Internet Society
>>>
>>> Office: +41 22 809 0368
>>> Mobile: +41 78 757 9943
>>>
>>> www.internetsociety.org <http://www.internetsociety.org>
>>> www.twitter.com/internetsociety
>>> www.youtube.com/internetsocietyvideo
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Chapter-delegates mailing list
>>> Chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/chapter-delegates
>>
>
>
>
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--
Klaus Birkenbihl
Internet Society German Chapter e.V. (ISOC.DE)
http://www.isoc.de/
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