A mail burst into my inbox on Tuesday bubbling over excitedly with the news that the County Kildare Community Network website, kildare.ie, run by Kildare County Council, won a LAMA award for “Best Use of External Communications”. You can read it here. Ah, don’t bother - I’ll give you the main points.
LAMA = Local Authority Members Association. Llama = a useful animal.
The award was presented by RTE presenter Sharon Ni Bheolain and John Gormley. For overseas readers, the former is just a teeny weeny bit less hot (about 1cal or 4.1868J) than Jolene Blalock, her name is actually Ní Bheoláin not Ni Bheolain and she works for RTÉ not RTE. The latter is a Green who sold his soul to Fianna Fáil for a ministerial post.
kildare.ie was recently redesigned. Adherence to web standards and improved accessibility & usability are an integral part of the new design. Ah yes, I remember them doing that. I couldn’t view a damn thing on the site for days unless I buried my pride and switched to Internet Explorer. Months later and their online planning system still only supports IE. If your browser of preference is Firefox or Safari you can use their LiteView version. So much for usability.
Here’s an interesting little exercise: Go to the World Wide Web Consortium’s markup validation service and plug in http://kildare.ie/. 23 errors! So much for adherence to web standards.
Go to the Council’s home page. Like the tiny text in light grey font with the white background? Pretty isn’t it? If your eyes aren’t the best it isn’t pretty at all. Oh, hold on, I apologise. I’m being far too harsh - on the right, toward the bottom there is a tiny link for Larger Font. Have you found it yet? Ok, I’ll give you another ten minutes.
*Puts kettle on. Makes nice mug of coffee*
Ok, you found it. Good. So now the font a readable size, even if it is light grey. See the Help/Accessibility link in the same section? Let’s go there and see what it says. Oh no! The font has gone back to the default size! Very accessible indeed.
Ok, well we’ll just have to struggle on. Let’s see what they have in the Publications section. Oh, look, the Development Plan for 2005-2011 is there. This will be interesting. I wonder what they have in store for my area? Now which is my area? I can’t tell because it’s all laid out in gobbledygook map references - I’ll just have to work my way through all the PDF files all until I find it. At least it’s usable.
Now I understand: They got the LAMA award, not for accessibility & usability, but for improved accessibility & usability. Believe me when I tell you most downloadable documents on the site used be in MS Word format - at least I can open PDF.
Personally I think the county would be better off with a few llamas.
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Frankly, I’m pleased to see the whole site isn’t splashed with blood and Post-Its. As far as I’ve seen, Local Authority politics are the ugliest and most ruthless in the world.
Sam - I can just picture the carnage in the Council offices - Post-Its laying dead everywhere. Those, still alive, screaming “stick me - stick me! End my pain!”
In fairness though, our Council is far from being ugly and ruthless - more like stupid and toothless. That said, some members are ugly, but few have the smarts to be ruthless.
Don’t they spit? Llamas I mean, not local council folk, although I could stand to be corrected on that.
Yes Primal - the WHAT? Think the Llamas are a much better plan. They’re fluffy, and look kind of cuddly, and the spitting thing could be quite useful if anyone dares ask the council to clarify anything.
Dearie me. Some llamas maybe but I don’t think the local authority are deserving of the High Llamas just yet. Oh, and it doesn’t like Opera too much either - or should that be vice versa?
FMC - I personally try avoid both - just in case.
White girl - Great idea. “Sorry the llama you need to speak to is not here today” would be a welcome change from the usual response I get.
Eolaí - I want llamas for the residents of the county not its authorities.
I didn’t bother trying Opera - I knew it wouldn’t work. Firefox, Opera, Safari etc. conform to W3C standards. IE doesn’t. So if a site is IE-specific, it is likely to hate any other browser.
We call IE Internet Exploder.
I wish I could write a big fat virus that would make all IE user’s computers er, explode. That’d make my job a lot easier, and me a lot happier. And it would serve them right.
Caro - To quote Annie (for the umpteenth time): If you’re still using Internet Explorer please do the world wide web a favour and download Firefox instead. It’s free and it will get you laid.
Jeez Primal, I can’t believe that all i had to do to get laid was download Firefox.
Now please excuse me whilst I rush and update my browser !!
I use Firefox all the time and nearest I get to laid is…. the boiled egg I have for breakfast!
White girl - Yes, unbelievable isn’t it? Ok, don’t let me delay you.
Grannymar - What you need are the right plug-ins. Downloading and installing will take just 3 minutes.
Well I downloaded Firefox and I must say that I was rather disappointed with the fast loading time - I do usually prefer things to take a little longer even when I do find the right plug-ins!!
And I’d just like to put in a small message of complaint Primal that I’m afraid I’m with Grannymar and it seems that boiled eggs are my only option too on the getting laid department although I do think the Firefox programme is smashing so perhaps I’ll forgive you this once!
White girl - What can I say? We men like to portray ourselves as Broadband, while women seem to prefer dial-up. Never shall we we understand each other.
For your next thrill, download Opera. It will have you … Ooops, I’d better stop now before someone suggests we get a (chat) room.
Opera! What am I missing? Is it thrilling?
Grannymar - There are differences between it and Firefox. Opera renders images much better. And it’s easier tun off images if you prefer. The “Speed Dial” thing is cool - you can have a bunch of your fav sites shown as little thumbnails. Firefox does some things better. I switch between both depending on what I’m doing. Any browser except IE!
Thanks Sneezy. I’ll run it past my personal advisor and she will say either “Yes mother” or “No, you don’t need it”!!!