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What's Gone Wrong With Websites?

By Lasa Information Systems Team

With the advent of almost universal broadband adoption, web designers have been piling more and more onto website home pages. Ian Runeckles at Lasa despairs and looks at what's causing the internet to slow down.

Recipe for disaster?

Recently I read Jaron Larnier's book You Are Not A Gadget – A Manifesto. Larnier is an American computer scientist who carried out early research into virtual reality software, and now currently works for Microsoft. He's a bit of a brainbox all round – an article in Rolling Stone showed him surrounded by all manner of musical string and wind instruments, all of which he can play apparently. In the book, a collection of his blog pieces, Larnier bemoans the way the internet has evolved, claiming that it was a lot more fun back on the old days and that web 2.0 hasn't delivered on its promise. Social networks are, in his mind, just fodder for commercial parasites in order to feed us advertising for stuff we never knew we needed.

A recent comment by our old friend John Kenyon had the not-for-profit social media world jumping up and down – John had the audacity to point out that email and websites were the vegetables and that social media was dessert. “Dessert” was interpreted as an unnecessary treat. John responded by saying that he saw the importance of social media and that used well it enhanced an organisation’s digital engagement – but that there were simply far too many organisations with poor websites which were being ignored whilst the focus had shifted to Facebook and Twitter.

Whilst I have some sympathies with Larnier's views I wouldn't support him all the way, and do think that some of what he says is generalisation. I’m certainly inclined to agree with John, however - these days the website is the first port of call for anyone interested in an organisation from prospective members and clients to potential donors and funders.

Grinding to a halt

But, ignoring social media for the time being, yer average website these days does seem to have deteriorated in quality. Things that I was glad to see the back of such as huge banner images, animated images (single image areas which change every few seconds) have started to make a comeback and even the dreaded flashing images are in evidence. Not only do they distract the eye, they make for slow loading unless you are on a pretty speedy broadband connection.

Case in point – home working is becoming more popular and if you are running a remote desktop terminal session and happen upon one of these sites, then forget doing anything for the next minute while it all loads - or crashes your connection. As you've probably guessed, I work remotely and regularly trawl around the web in search of useful stuff for both Computanews and Lasa's ICT Bulletin and I’ve been experiencing this more and more in the last few months.

Flash in the pan

Regrettably many of the sites which are using multiple images and (the horror, the horror) flash or java are charity or not-for-profit sites. The advent of social media and the perceived need to “tell your story” has meant that video and audio is embedded all over the shop. Likewise Twitter feeds.

Luckily there is an add-on for Firefox, and possibly other browsers, which stops the flash from loading. No wonder the late Steve Jobs didn’t want to incorporate flash or java into the iPad – he was quoted as saying "Java's not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It's this big heavyweight ball and chain."

Follow the money

In addition, much of the blame can be laid at the doors of organisations which raise money by advertising on their sites – and in these cash strapped times organisations are looking for multiple ways of staying afloat. Whilst accepting that need, it can, to my mind, be counter productive. If I visit a website and see it lit up like a Christmas tree with all manner of bleeping, flashing and scrolling images, then the message of the organisation is often obscured. Whilst I'm no expert on accessibility, I suspect that a 5 column, garish images to the max, website is not going to be easy for a a screen reader to navigate either.

Example – a leading third sector organisation’s site (I won’t name names…) currently has 8 animated advertising gifs, a banner image which also changes, 2 menus at the head of the page, a Twitter feed, links to news, blogs, questions, more links at the bottom.

Miles Davis, the late great jazz musician, was famously quoted as saying "I always listen to what I can leave out". Perhaps webmasters should take heed - just because you can embed a thousand feeds doesn't mean that you actually have to...

Not only websites to blame

Of course, it doesn't end with websites. Email html newsletters also fall prey to the disease – many are unreadable unless you load the images as the layout goes completely to pot. And those daily newspapers done with paper.li or similar are a total nightmare – essentially a collection of RSS feeds they slow the internet to a crawl.

The internet, back in the olden days, used to be called the information superhighway – if we use the transport system as an analogy, as soon as you open a new road it fills up with traffic – as more capacity is added to the net, the more nonsense is added to take advantage of it and we're back to square one.

Is it just the pressure of advertising and the web 2.0 mantra of engaging with your community that's to blame? Is it the fact that broadband is universally available and designers expect it to be fast these days? It isn't. In rural areas, if you get over 1Mbs then you're doing well – mine flatlines at 3Mbs which for a rural location is pretty good actually.

Or is it that websites are now so indistinguishable due to the advent of low or no-cost, easy to use content management systems that they have to be pimped with all sorts of bling to make them stand out? Or maybe it’s just that there aren’t that many good affordable web designers to go round…

Will web 3.0 be any better?

I accused Jaron Larnier of generalising and I guess I'm also doing that. There are many sites which conform to good web design principles and are accessible. Curiously, the commercial shopping sites tend to fall into this category – they aren't littered with adverts for other companies or products (other than their own), and their message is clear. Take John Lewis for example - admittedly the rolling image is in evidence – but the overall design is clear and logical and it functions accordingly. The search engine is precise and it's easy to order online..

As we move inexorably towards web 3.0 http://www.labnol.org/internet/web-3-concepts-explained/8908/ with personalisation and mobility as the main drivers, I wonder if the situation will improve. Perhaps the move towards making websites work on smaller mobile platforms where the delivery speed is slower, will cause a rethink in design and accessibility. One can hope, anyway. Please?