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Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards

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Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards

#71

Post by callum85 »

philliphaydon wrote: post #66
scoot wrote: post #43

"is it possible to create a shared set of tools to provide consistent, beautiful, and easy-to-use government websites?" Yup: http://gov.uk They even copied the colour scheme: https://playbook.cio.gov/designstandards/visual-style/#color...

Gov.UK is a terrible website. https://medium.com/@prenticemathew/ux-specialists-are-killin...

That article is bullshit. You can't judge gov.uk by its homepage, because that's almost never where you land.

Now that we have gov.uk, whenever I google something about doing my tax, or registering to vote at a new address, or any other arduous governmental admin shit, I usually end up on a beautifully simple and focused gov.uk page, and I'm in and out in 2 minutes. That's what a government website is about.

I agree the homepage looks like a parked domain but whatever. Take a random page like this: https://www.gov.uk/alter-a-will-after-a-death

Look at how brief and clear the writing is. Look at how straightforward its URL is. Have a look at some more pages, look how consistent the design language is. This is exactly what a government website should be like.

Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards

#73

Post by chris_wot »

rev_bird wrote: post #52
danso wrote: post #16

I encourage people to check out 18F's Github repos...there's a lot of useful tools and libraries, for starters. And then there's full projects to learn from, such as APIs and front-facing static sites. I don't know if they use any other kind of project manager besides Github Issues, but their projects have among the most active Issues activity...it seems that the USDS/18F team uses them as project discussion rooms th…

>A few years ago I remember finding a very obvious, easily fixable XSS vulnerability across all of the Department of Homeland Security sites... I think if I were in this situation today, I just wouldn't say anything. Being ignored would be one of the good outcomes; I'd be terrified of getting chucked into court for being a "HACKER AGAINST HOMELAND SECURITY."

Disclosing the vulnerability - what law could they prosecute you under?

Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards

#74

Post by andyjohnson0 »

scoot wrote: post #43

"is it possible to create a shared set of tools to provide consistent, beautiful, and easy-to-use government websites?" Yup: http://gov.uk They even copied the colour scheme: https://playbook.cio.gov/designstandards/visual-style/#color...

The (UK) Government Service Design Manual has a section for UX designers [1].

[1] https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/designers

Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards

#75

Post by Ntrails »

chris_wot wrote: post #73
rev_bird wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A few years ago I remember finding a very obvious, easily fixable XSS vulnerability across all of the Department of Homeland Security sites... I think if I were in this situation today, I just wouldn't say anything. Being ignored would be one of the good outcomes; I'd be terrified of getting chucked into court for being a "HACKER AGAINST HOMELAND SECURITY."

Disclosing the vulnerability - what law could they prosecute you under?

Depends how you found/testes/found it. In general it's a case of being uncertain what they could do if they decided to.

Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards

#76

Post by noir_lord »

dbarlett wrote: post #53
krschultz wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking outdated isn't the worst thing in a world. I think National Forest signs look like hotel signs from the 1950s, and that's probably not a coincidence. What's more interesting is if this will lead to better maintainability. Since this includes code as well as guidelines, hopefully it will reduce the variation between various agencies' websites. That in turn should make future upgrades more uniform and therefore…

If you're curious, Forest Service signs are specified by Sign and Poster Guidelines Engineering Manual EM7100-15 [1]. [1] http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprd3810021...

That standard is incredible, I had a good flick through it just in awe of the level of specification that goes into signage, I love that type of stuff, it's a hidden world.

Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards

#77

Post by rmc »

chris_wot wrote: post #73
rev_bird wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A few years ago I remember finding a very obvious, easily fixable XSS vulnerability across all of the Department of Homeland Security sites... I think if I were in this situation today, I just wouldn't say anything. Being ignored would be one of the good outcomes; I'd be terrified of getting chucked into court for being a "HACKER AGAINST HOMELAND SECURITY."

Disclosing the vulnerability - what law could they prosecute you under?

In order to find the vulnerbility you almost certainly have to try it out. Even for an XSS, you'd have to make a JS alert box popup for yourself. And then you've technically broken the law, since you hacked the website.

Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards

#78

Post by toxican »

hiharryhere wrote: post #60

There's a number of comments here about this making phishing easier. The bigger issue is that the US gov doesn't consistently use .gov domain names. http://www.ustraveldocs.com/ This is the official US gov site for applying for a visa. Given there are so many dodgy immigration agents operating with .com addresses it makes no sense as to why the official site is not just 'visa.gov'.

Can anyone think of any reasons that any and all interaction with the US Government via the web shouldn't take place via a .gov website? If something like healthcare takes place on a .gov site, visas definitely should.

Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards

#79

Post by coldpie »

chris_wot wrote: post #73
rev_bird wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A few years ago I remember finding a very obvious, easily fixable XSS vulnerability across all of the Department of Homeland Security sites... I think if I were in this situation today, I just wouldn't say anything. Being ignored would be one of the good outcomes; I'd be terrified of getting chucked into court for being a "HACKER AGAINST HOMELAND SECURITY."

Disclosing the vulnerability - what law could they prosecute you under?

The CFA is so broad that basically doing anything to a server that the server operator didn't anticipate is a violation. And since it was written to protect major companies' infrastructure in the 80s and 90s, the penalties are incredibly harsh.

Re: Introducing U.S. Web Design Standards

#80

Post by toxican »

mbesto wrote: post #14

Nice, they use SASS/Bourbon/Neat for their styling.[0][1] Huge fan and recommend it to anyone using Ruby for web development. [0] - https://playbook.cio.gov/designstandards/getting-started/ [1] - http://bourbon.io/

Just an FYI for anyone who sees this, you don't need to know or utilize Ruby at all in your workflow to make use of SASS/Bourbon (not sure about Neat, but I'm guessing it's like Bourbon?). You just need to have it installed and be able to install a few gems (gem install gemname) and you're pretty much good to go. Or there are a few GUI options out there that make it even easier.

I couldn't write a damn thing in Ruby and I utilize it every day via SASS/Compass

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