eGovernment site compliant shock!
Well blow me down with a feather. Surfing as I do for local government, I was compelled to visit the new central government site http://www.direct.gov.uk.
I happened to be using IE6 (not my browser of choice as those of you who know me will testify) and I thought “what a scrappy site!”. The positioning was (and still is) strange, with the latest news box to be found towards the bottom of the page, when it dawned on me that the page was being managed by style sheets.
Check it out using Opera (standards compliant) and see what I mean. The homepage works properly and doesn't look too bad.
It is ironic that direct.gov replaces http://www.ukonline.gov.uk which was once (in)famous for only working with Internet Explorer. A simple browser-detect server-side and working style sheet shouldn’t be too hard.
Funny old world!
Interesting!
I am using IE6 and Directgov looks fine to me - news is in the top right hand corner.
The Directgov site was quite well received by users when we looked at it as part of a bigger project a few weeks ago.
Users like the blocks of information and the ‘Do it online’ section was particularly well received.
Curious. I looked at this again on an NT box with IE 5.5 and all was as expected (which I didn’t expect!). I’ve checked a couple of other machines with XP with IE6.0.2800 and they definately do not like this site at all. I think it is an IE thing.
I agree that the site looks good (when displayed correctly) and seems very useable.
Maybe this is related to screen size? - I work on 17″ screen - you?
Another anomaly with this site is its name - ‘Directgov’ is the name of the site, but the URL is ‘www.direct.gov.uk’ - logically (but tautologically) shouldn’t it be ‘www.directgov.gov.uk’?
If I was booking up the URL’s on behalf of the department running this site, I’d have snapped that one up and routed it to my site before something else, such as a critical mirrorsite perhaps, is put in place.
Where possible, I’d also do the same with ‘www.govdirect.gov.uk’ (which seems a much more intuitive name to me) and other variations, including all final extensions and possible typos on each.
Weirdly, http://www.govdirect.co.uk takes you to a for sale domain ‘airportpark.co.uk’
Interestingly, ‘www.gov.uk’ does take you to the Directgov site.
Definately not related to screen size. I work on a 21″ monitor but I never use the browser fullscreen. Even full screen it has the same effect. It can be one of the problems of positional stylesheets though.
I’m using opera 7.23 on a linux box at the moment. I’ve just resized the browser window and it behaves really well, it is quite impressive (and it is telling direct.gov that it is opera, not IE or mozilla).
Directgov.gov.uk sums up for me the problems with the proliferation of .gov sites. I work for a .gov and I find the .gov site naming labyrinthine and even recursive in some cases. They are /so/ unmemorable and/or confusing.
Direct.gov should be consistent with govtalk.gov.uk I suppose, but it just sounds like “guv” endlessly repeated to me!