What makes it the nineties and what other CFS websites are out there that are more up to today's standards as you put it.
What makes it 90's? Well, seeing as you asked....
1)
Table based layout - the entire website uses tables to set out the content. Doing this was rabid in the 90's because people wanted extend their websites and make them interesting, but browsers didn't support positioning with CSS the to the same extent they do now. Table based websites need more code for them to be written, so they take longer to load. Also many browsers will not display the contents of a table until all the table has been downloaded, so when the entire page is in a table the site will feel much slower to the user.
2)
Use of gifs in the menu. All the menu items are images, which then load more images when you mouse over. For a font that looks suspiciously like
Impact, the use of images is totally unnecessary! Again, it makes the website load slower, (that's 26 more images you have to download before you can even see the menu), but it also causes the website to become inaccessible to screen readers (for blind people) and search engine robots (that index the site for inclusion in search engine results). The only excuse to use images to replace text this side of the year 2000 is because you absolutely need a font that isn't common. Even then, there are technologies you can use to keep the site accessible.
3)
Ridiculously big header banner on every page. That banner is huge! Large banners are generally used on a title page to make a bold statement and catch the users attention. They should not be used on every page. These days, 60% of internet users have a screen resolution of 1024 x 768px and below. The header image is 1000 x 494px, so assuming that a browser window only has 90% of the screen anyway, (because of task-bars, title bars, navigation buttons etc), 60% of people who visit the website will have almost the entire screen filled up with a banner that says "Mount Barker Fire Rescue Serving the hills since 1939". And they'll get that on every page they go to. The remaining 40% will only have half the screen covered, which isn't really that much better.
- On a slightly more technical note, that header should be a CSS background, so that it's only downloaded once, rather than on every page, and there should be an alt text set, so that search engines know the content of the heading. Try searching "barker fire" or "barker cfs" on google.
4)
Word art. What? As numbers said, it uses word art, which was all the rage 15 years ago, when the internet was new and exciting. The only place you should expect to see word art these days is on the doctors surgery newsletter, and even then you shouldn't enjoy it.
5)
Black background, red text. Yes, they're a fire service and red is associated with fire, but that combo really isn't far off from the flashing animated .gifs that Nirvana were singing along to back in "the good old days". Red on black is a very nasty thing to do to your colour blind audience. Also the use of different colours for links, makes the site less usable. In general, links should be blue, as that's the industry standard that everyone is used to, but if they're changed, they should be the the same colour throughout the site, not a mix of colours.
6)
Semantic markup. Headings should be marked as headings (not a link with the class of "toc_headlinebox"). Tables should only be used for tabular data. Lists should be used for lists. Images need alternative text set. Again, not doing this was acceptable last century, but it's fairly poor workmanship these days.
7)
The Australian flag. Is this really necessary? Wouldn't a CFS logo be more appropriate, or at least a South Australian flag? That flag is the icing on the Americanisation of the site.
...and that's all just looking at the design and code, not looking at the content. As I said in my first post though, I think it's great that Mount Barker are being pro-active with their website. The fact I dislike the design does not mean I dislike the idea, or the intent behind it.
I don't know of any CFS websites that are up to today's standards - there are several using standard CMS templates with nice simple designs however (see
Piccadilly or
Region 2 Ops for an example).
If you want to see some lovely website designs, have a look at:
I actually find this post quite insulting CFS Firie. Please supply a list of Brigade websites you have developed so we can similarly critique......with dispariging comments just like yours.
I don't need to have developed a whole lot of CFS brigade websites to be able to comment on one. Think of all the bollocking of CFS appliances that happens on these forums, and how often to we ask for a list of appliances the users have developed? However, I'm sorry that you find my comment insulting.
The good thing about this new InterWeb 
thing...is there is a bunch of DIFFERENT looking and feeling websites out there for everyone to enjoy, and not just a bunch of MS Publisher template sites, that all look the same (a point apparantly lost on SAFECOM)
Couldn't agree more! The last thing we need on the web-o-sphere
is to have lots of
websites that all look the same.
Good on you Joff and the Mt Barker guys and girls....at least you had the gumption to put it out there and allow it to be criticised by the uncharitable
So you're saying you're nice comments were just your charity?
Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.
--Stephen King
(Not that I consider myself an enemy - it would just appear I was labelled as one)
