Seems it’s the season for new websites for very important people.
Check these out!
The queen’s new website
A first look at the site shows that it’s clean and seems easy to navigate. Odd that there’s no favicon (the little icon that appears next to the web address in a web browser). I’d have gone for a little crown or something!
Read a report about the new website here.
Technology-wise,it looks like the site has some ASP elements,which means it’s been constructed in Microsoft ASP.net.
Click to find out more about ASP on the Microsoft site.
Microsoft in their infinite wisdom have put a popup ad over the top of the page. This is such a no-no on a website that it’s astonishing they’d even do it.
The White House
President Barack Obama is the first president ever to use email. No one prior to that had access. Even GW Bush,an ardent emailer gave up his Yahoo! account prior to taking up the presidency.
The Obama campaign took it to the grass-roots,with social networking and ideas to engage the population.
Click to read a Search Engine Watch article on President Obama’s campaign.
His media strategist Ben Self is now going to be advising the Australian Rudd Government on how to engage the public and therefore fight elections.
Click to read an AGE report on Ben Self working for the Australian Government.
When the Obama administration moved into the White House,they found it full of old PCs running old Windows operating systems. They were used to Apple computers and so presumably Apple’s bank account is beginning to grow as these computers are replaced!
So,to the new website:
The new blog –to keep people informed of the president’s agenda and movements –is a great idea for keeping the country engaged and giving them information. Information is gold out on the web,and you’d be surprised how it can help you too!
Click to read the first White House blog post here
As for the rest of the site,it’s got good targetted information in the form of a big picture that appears above the “fold”(the term for the part of the web page that’s visible before you have to scroll),and plenty of links below. The layout is nice and clear,with good use of contrasting text to draw the eye to headings and things of interest.
You’ll notice that headings are in a serif font (that’s the font that’s got the little tails on the letters),and the content itself is in a sans-serif font (no tails).
It’s been said that Serif fonts are easier to read for print-use as the eye can catch the next letter quicker because of the tails. However,Sans-Serif (Sans=Without) fonts seem pretty standard on web pages and on-screen.
Click to see the White House website here.
I’d say that the designers used Serif fonts for headings to match the fonts used in the seal of the United States President. The colourscheme would be the same.
That’s the sort of information you should give your designer when you get a website constructed –colours,fonts and the like. Remember though that there are a limited number of fonts you can use on websites without reverting to graphic headings. The reason is that while you might have taken a long time to choose that great-looking font for your company,it’s not necessarily going to be loaded onto every computer in the world.
On the whole,websites will stick with “Verdana”and “Arial”for Sans-Serif fonts and “Times”and “Courier”for Serif. This is simply because these are most likely to be on a visitors computer. An example of these is below:
Back on the White House website again:Underneath the bonnet (or hood if you’re in the US),there’s one .asp reference,but it’s mostly Javascript and HTML,so it’s likely this site was designed without Microsoft tools.
Not that that’s a bad thing of course —a company that has the majority of PC operating systems in the world can’t be all bad!
