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My feelings of the FA update...
14 years ago
General
Some journals are personal, and some journals are business related for Kinzart. For everything else, I don't care.
Ug... why FA? Why ruin a perfectly good day?
Now don't get me wrong and close this out assuming I am complaining about the overall design. I am not.
My complaint lies in the coding and designing. It took me only 5 seconds to immediately hate it. This is just another example of the wannabe nerds trying to act all cool when clearly they are not.
So to make reading easier, let's tart with a well organized list:
1) TABLES! To the non-coding readers, remember Microsoft Excel and those spreadsheets? You use that to store information and make graphs, right? In XHTML/HTML, tables hold the same purpose: you hold data in them and use it to help organize it to make viewing it easier.
So how is FA using it? The top bar (I'll just call it the nav bar to save my migraine) is composed and organized with a table, which in HTML standards is heavily frowned upon and more importantly, is the incorrect way of solving the issue. To not get too technical, you all should remember text boxes, right? In HTML, there are two items that work the same way, and in all honesty, has been used everywhere else with no problems and create the same appearance.
2) Poor designing! I'll be uploading a snapshot to help explain this, but to make things easier, notice the two ads at the top of the page. If you see only one or none and only the FA banner, then you should already be seeing the problem. This cheats the people who do pay for ad support (who are most likely paying on a per viewing rate) and also those may be interested (since the ads here are based on common interest). This has also had some people have mobile operation issues but it also means if you are not using the maximum resolution on your PC, you will not be able to see everything. This is a heavy abuse of not listening to the users by not observing what the MOST popular resolution is.
Think trying to put a movie poster onto a normal piece of paper without scaling at all and that should give you an idea on a more general explanation. The technical solution: find the smallest this site was designed for and set it as the min-width in the CSS styling. That isn't even HTML!
3) Positioning of the Nav bar! Seriously, it's scrollable? Just lock its position to the top of the browser and make the bottom part scrollable. It isn't that hard. That or at the very least include a BACK TO TOP link at the BOTTOM of the page! The purpose of a nav bar is to help you navigate around a site, and this one on FA requires you to navigate to it first!
4) Site is only navigable via JavaScript! This is a major design flaw. Your site should be navigable without the JavaScript, which is not hard to do. For instance, the My FA 'drop down' should at the VERY LEAST link to a master page where the options are already present, especially for the support links where in order to access them REQUIRES that the JavaScript is working properly!
Think customer support on other businesses where there are no touch tone options and is strictly voice operated only. Wait until you come across someone with a strong accent or can't even speak and already the service is doomed.
Over all, I am disappointed beyond relief with FA's performance and their progress has been like Facebook's stocks: Sounds great at the beginning, is looking good at start, but ends up being total crap in the end for a service we had high hopes in. As someone who Aced Web Design, has written a few sites and web tools, fully working on many platforms and conditions, I am not even sure I can wish FA good luck on this one considering previous let downs.
-Flame
Now don't get me wrong and close this out assuming I am complaining about the overall design. I am not.
My complaint lies in the coding and designing. It took me only 5 seconds to immediately hate it. This is just another example of the wannabe nerds trying to act all cool when clearly they are not.
So to make reading easier, let's tart with a well organized list:
1) TABLES! To the non-coding readers, remember Microsoft Excel and those spreadsheets? You use that to store information and make graphs, right? In XHTML/HTML, tables hold the same purpose: you hold data in them and use it to help organize it to make viewing it easier.
So how is FA using it? The top bar (I'll just call it the nav bar to save my migraine) is composed and organized with a table, which in HTML standards is heavily frowned upon and more importantly, is the incorrect way of solving the issue. To not get too technical, you all should remember text boxes, right? In HTML, there are two items that work the same way, and in all honesty, has been used everywhere else with no problems and create the same appearance.
2) Poor designing! I'll be uploading a snapshot to help explain this, but to make things easier, notice the two ads at the top of the page. If you see only one or none and only the FA banner, then you should already be seeing the problem. This cheats the people who do pay for ad support (who are most likely paying on a per viewing rate) and also those may be interested (since the ads here are based on common interest). This has also had some people have mobile operation issues but it also means if you are not using the maximum resolution on your PC, you will not be able to see everything. This is a heavy abuse of not listening to the users by not observing what the MOST popular resolution is.
Think trying to put a movie poster onto a normal piece of paper without scaling at all and that should give you an idea on a more general explanation. The technical solution: find the smallest this site was designed for and set it as the min-width in the CSS styling. That isn't even HTML!
3) Positioning of the Nav bar! Seriously, it's scrollable? Just lock its position to the top of the browser and make the bottom part scrollable. It isn't that hard. That or at the very least include a BACK TO TOP link at the BOTTOM of the page! The purpose of a nav bar is to help you navigate around a site, and this one on FA requires you to navigate to it first!
4) Site is only navigable via JavaScript! This is a major design flaw. Your site should be navigable without the JavaScript, which is not hard to do. For instance, the My FA 'drop down' should at the VERY LEAST link to a master page where the options are already present, especially for the support links where in order to access them REQUIRES that the JavaScript is working properly!
Think customer support on other businesses where there are no touch tone options and is strictly voice operated only. Wait until you come across someone with a strong accent or can't even speak and already the service is doomed.
Over all, I am disappointed beyond relief with FA's performance and their progress has been like Facebook's stocks: Sounds great at the beginning, is looking good at start, but ends up being total crap in the end for a service we had high hopes in. As someone who Aced Web Design, has written a few sites and web tools, fully working on many platforms and conditions, I am not even sure I can wish FA good luck on this one considering previous let downs.
-Flame
