On Jun 12, 12:24 pm, John Davis wrote:
On 6/11/2010 8:36 AM, Dick Grady AC7EL wrote:



Steve,

I agree. It is bizarre that people would need a webinar to learn how
to find stuff. The old site wasn't broken. "If it ain't broke, don't
fix it." It's just like when Microsoft or some other software
company comes out with a new and "improved" program or operating
system. You have to learn how to use it all over again.

And many links on the site don't work.

TO take this issue first.. The web site is supposed to have a ton of new
features.. And a conference (Training conference) which is what this is
can help you to forget,, ur, learn to quickly access the features you nee
d.

As for why only Midwest.. Cause that's the directors sponsoring the
event.. Other directors are welcome to do the same in their areas.

It is a matter of perspective and temperament.

My own perspective is that intelligent and smart people can and should
design websites that allow people to do what they want, without having
to learn or have other extraneous "stuff" get in their way. That stuff
can act as a barrier.

Illustrative related story: I needed a new pair of skates, and I
needed the quickly for a game the next morning. I like CCM skates, so
I went to their website. I get a screen saying I needed to install a
new version of Flash player. No other choice, and I wasn't going to
get to see anything if I didn't. So I download the new version.
Install, and I had to reboot. I'm starting to get annoyed. Then I go
to the site again. Computer freezes. Task manager wasn't up to the
task, so I had to hard shutdown, safe boot, restart. Okay, I'll give
it another try. I went to the site, and got to see that critical Flash
animation. It was a goalie sliding sideways across the screen. 45
minutes of messing around to see a goalie slide across the screen. I
left them a note explaining that if I hadn't been committed to buying
their skates, I would have given up and gone to another site and
probably not given CCM another look.

The ARRL website is a true failure. broken links, and if we have to be
trained to use it, it moves all the way to epic failure. I used to
visit daily, now I don't use it at all. It has moved from being a
great resource to something I avoid. Seriously, how does this site get
published with bad links? Any decent web publishing package will run a
check on your links and tell you which ones don't work.

There is a lesson here, and it is something that web designers have
come across again and again, from the days of designing websites
specifically for Internet Explorer, and bragging about it. Web
designers have their preferences. I've sat in meetings where a
designer has declared users that don't have whatever "feature" he
wants to put in the page as irrelevant. It is also why a lot of
businesses have to use Internet explorer 6, as bad a program as that
is, they've designed their web apps specifically for it.

The lesson is that web pages should be designed for the user, not the
designer. If training is involved, if links don't work, then it is
hard to call this one a success.

- 73 de Mike N3LI -