27 November (Part 1) - Bexley.gov.uk
As
you might guess I am a frequent visitor to Bexley’s equivalent of the Hampton
Court Maze, the council website, and when I need to compare it with the sites
provided by other local authorities I am usually struck by how ugly and difficult
to use it is. I produced some screen shots of
Bexley’s site misbehaving last
month and this week while researching the
car park charges in Bexley and adjacent boroughs
I saw the announcement that Bexley’s site has been improved
“to enhance the overall viewing experience for visitors”. It is true that the
alphabetic index no longer disappears entirely on small screens but I didn’t
regard that an improvement because when I clicked on ‘P’ for parking charges
nothing happened. Then after a long delay I was presented with ‘Page not found’.
Other letters were the same. It was still happening early this morning but now appears to be fixed.
Something else that needs to be fixed is that clicking on the
council’s logo does not link back to the Home page. Surely that is pretty much
standard practice on every commercial and local authority website? You may also
notice that Bexley council is allowing advertising to clutter up its pages. I
don’t mean to brag but my screen is 2,400 pixels wide (two 1920x1200 screens
side by side in portrait mode) and unless I drag my window out to around 2,000
pixels the adverts remain stubbornly partially off the screen. Bexley seem to be
quite good at indecent blogging but not quite up to designing a decent
‘overall viewing experience for visitors’.
For Bexley’s ‘webteam’. As you will see, half the advert and the all important Buy Now button
is lost beyond the right hand margin using Internet Explorer. Firefox and Chrome OK.