I just read on Mumbrella that Glora Jeans launched a new marketing campaign today with a brand new shiny website. I knew their old site well due to analysing it as part of a competitor review recently.
The site starts with audio, which is my pet hate. It adds absolutely nothing to the experience and I really wish that agencies would learn that adding auto-play audio is a horrible thing to do to a website, particularly the sort of website people access from work. There’s not even a volume button to switch it off.
But the reason I’m blogging about it is that a site that just launched in 2009 is STILL USING TABLES FOR LAYOUT! Sorry for the all-caps but I find this so mind-blowingly unbelievable that an agency could say they are the experts in building websites (because the client doesn’t know better) and still give them a website using tables for layout.
Whoever developed this website, shame on you. Web standards became standard back in 2002 or 2003. You are developing using outdated modes and you have made the internet a worse place. It’s bad enough using Flash to write most of the content but I’m shocked that a professional web developer would still use bad code and launch it for a client. The galling thing is Gloria Jeans probably paid top dollar for this website - it’s not like a $5k backyard hack job. If you developed this website, have a look at the W3C guidelines published on 6 November 2000. Yes, 9 years ago. That is the correct way to code - they are standards.
And now you’ve gone and ruined my new years resolution to be more positive and stop griping about bad websites but honestly - you have just done the web equivalent of making a door handle out of elephant tusks. People might still do it, and some people might pay for it, but it’s very unsavory and I think it’s unethical.
This post is tagged under: Development, accessibility
Sad thing is we are the minority, Coding in tables is the norm. Standards are just the fringe thing those loopy people do. :)
We always think we are the ones that are the majority and the in the right. Consider maybe we are just the rebel element.
Anyway its cheaper to code in tables.
Client gets a site that looks nice. They don’t care about the “stuff under the hood” So they are happy.
Interesting, so why is it bad to us Flash for content now.
Gary I really thought standards were the majority, particularly as most new sites I look at don’t use tables. I know there are a lot of tables based sites out there, but thought they were being phased out with each redesign.
I’m just blown away that a new site is using tables - it was a 100% refresh and completely different from their old site.
I just haven’t seen a new site launched (for at least 2 years) with tables.
It’s not the client’s fault, they shouldn’t have to care about under the hood - I hold the agency 100% responsible for this one.
Is it really cheaper to code in tables? Once you take into account worse SEO, future design changes, etc, it really doesn’t add up.
From my experience, good standards based developers don’t cost any more than crappy backwards table developers…
Yup, standardardistas are still considered fringe and extreme purists. The broader web dev community still thinks tables are hot, on average - pick any of the recent ‘get real, use tables’ posts and read the comments.
Agencies don’t care if standards sites are easier to rebuild, because they WANT the client to pay to rebuild from scratch next time.
Application developers think tables are hot because they’re often programmers who don’t like doing that HTML crap in the first place. They’re certainly not going to learn CSS layouts, they have Real Work to do.
Then of course there’s our own sample bias - we surround ourselves with passionate standards people. We don’t hang out with the “it’s just a job” crowd because they don’t turn up to the same industry events. So we don’t see that perspective much.
As dissapointing as it is, Gary and Ben are right. There’s no incentive to adopt standards with the agencies that create these brand/campaign sites. Besides most of the “coders” responsible don’t know better (whether they are programmers as Ben suggests or designers for whom the code does not matter). *sigh*
send them this pic: http://makenosound.tumblr.com/post/85018459/amen
i know it looks a bit serial killer/stalkerish…but maybe that’s what it takes :-)