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Simon Willison’s Weblog

Usability.net rant

Someone, please, tell me UsabilityNet is a joke. Spotted via an article on hebig.org, UsabilityNet (apparently recently redesigned) claims to be “a project funded by the European Union to provide resources and networking for usability practitioners, managers and EU projects”. Again, IANAUE but here are some things wrong with it just off the top of my head:

  • The site uses Flash for all of the navigation (including the stuff on the front page), apparently for the sole reason of providing a rollover effect for links. This comes at the cost of requiring a plugin (sure Flash has something like a 95% market share, but try telling that to someone who browses with Lynx), making the site far less attractive to search engines and, most importantly of all, disabling my right mouse button. I can’t open links in new windows, I can’t open links in new tabs and I can’t copy the URL of a link to the clipboard without following the link first.
  • “Help us improve our site: click the WAMMI button”. The WAMMI button is a big grey square with “WAMMI” written on it. It links to a questionaire about the site, but the actual text of the button (an acronym which is not explained anywhere) fails to indicate what it does completely.
  • The site replicates Jakob Nielsen’s Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design and then blatantly ignores mistake 8, which warns against breaking the browser’s ability to distinguish between visited and non visited links (the site uses the same colour for both in the HTML, and Flash does not have the capability to distinguish between them in the first place).

It’s not all bad—once you get over the utterly bizzare decision to use Flash for the primary navigation it is relatively easy to navigate the site, understand what it has to offer and find the information you are looking for. The site claims to have been designed with accessibility in mind so it is likely that they have implemented Flash MX’s accessibility features (I have no way of testing this) but Flash is still inherently less accessible than plain HTML thanks to its graphical nature and reliance on a plugin. The thing that baffles me most is that the Flash used on the site is completely reproducable in standard HTML.

Posted 20th December 2002 at 5:57 pm

This is Usability.net rant by Simon Willison, posted on 20th December 2002.

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11 comments

  1. I won't edit my initial post, but I'd like to make it clear that "tell me this is a joke" was something of a knee-jerk reaction. The site contents is fine and the information architecture works well, but the Flash just put me straight in to rant mode.

    Simon Willison - 20th December 2002 18:04 - #

  2. Well, I am a usability engineer (although I don't use that title), and I have to agree. I can only imagine that the reasoning behind using flash was something like: "Well, it's too much work to do this in HTML, lets use flash instead". Which is obviously a strange way of looking at it, but the only reason i can think of! They don't even use "onmouseup" which replicates normal clicking behaviour. I.e. if you click-and-hold an HTML link, you can drag off it and not use the link. With their flash, you click at all, you will follow the link. I can understand the rant, this thing was actually funded, so they should have had the time/expertise to get the basic HTML stuff right. Caveates: 1. The content is pretty good, it's where I would go to if I wanted overviews of what methods to use when. 2. I know my site doesn't work well in older browsers. My user group is one - me!

    Alastc - 20th December 2002 18:26 - #

  3. Screenshot of usabilitynet in lynx: http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~takoyaki/vault/usabil itynet.gif (notice the pervading blankness).

    Micah - 20th December 2002 21:52 - #

  4. I have to say that I think our Uni. UI programming course has been a sucess. I'm certainly more aware of user interfaces that I was before and more critical of other peoples design.

    Swannie - 21st December 2002 17:06 - #

  5. "Flash technology was used in the creation of this site. In particular the navigation bar was constructed using flash. The reason for this was an accessibility issue." (<URL:http://www.usabilitynet.org/noflash.htm>).

    I don't get it. :)

    Ngb - 2nd January 2003 18:13 - #

  6. And the site uses a forwarding trap, so you can't just <-Back out of it. You have to make a special effort to back up *two* links instead of one.

    rwh - 15th January 2003 00:20 - #

  7. http://www.wammi.com/ apparently: WAMMI stands for quality of use on your web site! the letters stand for Web site Analysis and MeasureMent Inventory. What I don't understand is why 'usable' and 'attractive' seem to be mutually exclusive adjectives when it comes to websites. Surely it's entirely possible to achieve both? I so want to redesign this site!

    Dreamer - 18th January 2003 08:12 - #

  8. Is this a UsabilityNet rant or a Usability.net rant?

    Garrett Smith - 30th April 2003 02:15 - #

  9. This site is really a joke. I use Firebird, it doesn't have flash plugin, I have to go ahead and fiddle with the registration stuff, though the newest version might have installation thing. Fortunately not many sites depend on flash, if they do I switch to IE.

    But I have never seen a usability site depending 100% to flash. That's quite stupid and shows how easily anybody can become a usability guru.

    Sergio - 29th January 2004 20:08 - #

  10. Well, you are all right, of course, the site is a mess from a design and accessibility point of view. I was actually consulted to redesign the site, and duly delivered a new design based, naturally enough, on W3 html standards. The templates were delivered to UsabilityNet over a year ago, so I can only assume they are still testing them :) before going live with an attractive new site, which also incorporates their new visual identity, also designed by my agency. We got paid, anyway.

    glenno - 22nd May 2004 12:53 - #

  11. Stunning - it's now April 2005, and a version with text-only links (huh? if done well, image links can even be more accessible) is still "under construction".

    The argument about using Flash for accessibility (Flash for resizing fonts) is of course utter nonsense - no need to explain that here. I just went to the site fully expecting that by now some basics would have been fixed. I was sorely disappointed.

    I don't use Flash (on purpose) - the result is that I cannot get to any content on the site, except the silly WAMMI button where I filled in the survey.

    Marjolein Katsma - 5th April 2005 10:00 - #

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