Indiana University East – Episode #125
Site Scores:
| Site | Visual | Information | Code | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indiana University East | 97 | 95 | 90 | (282/300) 94% A |
Today’s Tip:
Make sure you are using progressive enhancement or graceful degradation for every aspect of your site. If IE6 doesn’t support something then give them a different experience. There is no need to spend hours hacking something together so a page works in IE. Providing information doesn’t mean you have to guarantee the same experience on every device.
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Tags: episode
November 9th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Thanks for the great review!
I’m the “web rockstar” from IU East, and primary coder / developer for the site you reviewed. I really appreciate your comments. I want to provide one small disclaimer about the “Social Work” secondary nav — you happened to review the one area of our site that was in a transitional phase of personnel. Murphy’s law, I suppose.
The secondary-nav links are generally active and functional, otherwise.
Thanks again!
November 9th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
One other thing, re: the IE6 issue — the browseralert bar was added as a feedback feature; The site should be more or less functional in IE6, except for certain bits of visual flair (the occasional transparent PNG, for example), but I’ve found that many IE6 users simply don’t realize they are using an obsolete browser (or don’t understand that a browser can become obsolete.) I do agree with you about providing a lesser experience for retro browsers rather than crippling the site, and we really do strive for that.
The “Click for Email” Javascript thing is a good point, and yes, it was to prevent email scrapers. I’ll see if we can come up with a solution that’s more accessible.
If you do have the opportunity, please look at some other Academic areas on the site (Natural Science & Mathematics or Humanities & Social Sciences would be good ones to look at) — as I mentioned previously, the Socialwork site is an exception, rather than the norm.
Cheers.
November 9th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Great work, Aaron!
I checked Analytics, it looks like ~6% of visitors are IE6.
Loved your thoughts, thanks for sharing Nick!
November 9th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Aaron,
Its all good. By far your site is a head of the pack, you are a true web rockstar! I checked out some of the other areas of the site. The Natural Science’s area is really nice. I think you are moving in the right direction. One other thing I did notice was the title tag in some areas, if you go to http://www.iue.edu/nsm/ the title is ” – Indiana University East” It looks like you meant to put “School of Natural Science & Mathematics” before the dash but it is missing. I just wanted to let you know so it didn’t start impacting your SEO.
Also sorry about my cursor not showing up. I am going to try to re-render it.
Brad,
Keep up the great work! IUE is definitely in the elite group of A ranked sites.
6% is not bad at all, we have almost double that at my university. Mainly from internal computers and overseas.
November 10th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Nick,
Thanks for the kind words! We’ve been fans of your site for a while. Good luck with your own ongoing projects!
Sincerely,
John Oak Dalton
Director of Communications and Marketing
Indiana University East
November 14th, 2009 at 11:06 am
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