91–100 of 234 posts
Looks like a template as http://KashFlow.com seems eerily similar. Better that than a custom design though, I imagine it saved a fair bit of money.
FWIW, http://www.jadu.net are the agency who made the Manchester site.
I applaud the change and thinking outside of the box, but the Manchester City Council website looks like a $45 Wordpress theme off of Themeforest. The slider appears to offer no value to the site other than taking up a massive amount of room without really justifying its existence. I'm not a designer, I'm a developer and I am struggling to understand the reasoning behind that slider. While I agree that the trendy loo…
I'm sure everyone else is aware of how local government websites look in their own parts of the world - but for a similar-sized UK city Edinburgh City Council's website is a good (i.e. bad) example for comparison: http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk
Complain all you want, but http://www.aberdeen.gov.uk doesn't exist at all. For the third city in Scotland I find that really embarrassing.
In The Netherlands these two sites score very high every year: http://www.capelleaandenijssel.nl/ http://cms.dordrecht.nl/ They contain a lot more useful information above the fold than the linked one. Good design involves a lot more than eye candy.
How come this and all .gov.uk sites mentioned in the comments include Google Analytics scripts? I would imagine that the sharing of the data collected on government websites with 3rd parties be rather strictly regulated. Especially when it's collected as a part of a tracking infrastructure that spans beyond said sites.
When I go to a service, for example "Roads, parking & transport" and I go to the bottom of the page there is a section called "Policies, statements & resources". Now I need to click it in order to see the items, why not have it in this state by default? I've checked some of the other pages and there never really are a lot of links underneath there anyway, so this won't make the pages a lot longer.
Form always follows function when it comes to design, and when it comes to government, function requires that the site is as accessible as possible.
Color selection, JavaScript use, and extended backwards compatibility with older browsers are among the the many considerations one has to take into account for the elderly, the impaired, and those who simply don't have access to modern browsers. That being said, it's definitely possible to have stunning design with these things taken into account, we just can't implement every bell and whistle we're used to.
As for the site, I can't see how the navigation would have me pulling out any fewer hairs than any other government site, but it is very large, multicolored and slidey, so if I were putting together an iPad commercial I might use it in a couple of shots.
I think I actually prefer http://www.gateshead.gov.uk , which is a lot less "in your face". If I go to a .gov.uk site it's because a need a specific piece of information, I don't need the design getting in the way.