BHIT: Web Idiots

Ian G Batten said:

Of course, were I a bad person, I'd suggest that as a
government funded body their website should comply with
the Disability Discrimination Act, and it's 99.9% certain
that a site which demands Flash in order to see its front
page isn't compliant. But making that complaint would be
childish, wouldn't it?

BHIT would probably claim that they wouldn't have been
disabled if they'd worn a helmet ;-)

Ian G Batten said:

So, linking from Guy's pages, I decided to go and have
a chortle.

First attempt: ``You don't appear to have the Shockwave plug-
in.'' OK, I've only got the Shockwave 5.0 plugin installed,
because Shockwave is the work of the devil, so I followed
the links and installed the latest bits. Shutdown the
browser [*], restart, and lo, Help->About Plugins shows I'm
now running Shockwave 6.0 r81, which is the latest and
greatest. Visit BHIT again. It _still_ says I'm not running
Shockwave, and offers me precisely the release I'm running.

Same here, Mozilla on Linux. But it is correct, we don't
have Shockwave, we have Shockwave Flash plugins. Shockwave
is only available for Windows and Mac. Great innit?

Quoted message said:

Clearly, BHIT care more about pushing Shockwave than
pushing their ideas, so sadly I'll be unable to read their
pearls of wisdom. It's sad, isn't it?

Very. I was looking for a laugh, instead I got annoying
website stupidity before it even starts.

Quoted message said:

Of course, were I a bad person, I'd suggest that as a
government funded body their website should comply with the
Disability Discrimination Act, and it's 99.9% certain that
a site which demands Flash in order to see its front page
isn't compliant. But making that complaint would be
childish, wouldn't it?

Not in the slightest. Never mind government funding, anyone
who makes a site/frontpage like this needs a healthy dose of
[censored] kicking.

Frink

--
Doctor J. Frink : 'Rampant Ribald Ringtail' See his mind
here : cmp.liv.ac.ukfrinkOpen ↗ Annoy his mind here :
pjf at cmp dot liv dot ack dot ook "No sir, I didn't like
it!" - Mr Horse

in message <[email hidden]>, Ian G Batten

(') said:

So, linking from Guy's pages, I decided to go and have a
chortle.

First attempt: ``You don't appear to have the Shockwave
plug-in.'' OK, I've only got the Shockwave 5.0 plugin
installed, because Shockwave is the work of the devil, so
I followed the links and installed the latest bits.
Shutdown the browser [*], restart, and lo, Help->About
Plugins shows I'm now running Shockwave 6.0 r81, which is
the latest and greatest. Visit BHIT again. It _still_ says
I'm not running Shockwave, and offers me precisely the
release I'm running.

Don't start.

The level of competence of the web 'design' industry is
enough to make any sensible person weep. Not one commercial
website in twenty conforms either to the published standards
or with the law on disability access, and in general it
seems the more money is spent the worse the outcome.

The is not something which is unique to dubious political
lobbying campaigns.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke)
jasmine.org.uk~simonOpen ↗

;; single speed mountain bikes: for people who cycle
on flat mountains.

(Doctor J. Frink) said:

On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 16:31:00 +0000 (UTC), Ian G Batten
<[email hidden]> wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

So, linking from Guy's pages, I decided to go and have a
chortle.

First attempt: ``You don't appear to have the Shockwave
plug-in.'' OK, I've only got the Shockwave 5.0 plugin
installed, because Shockwave is the work of the devil, so
I followed the links and installed the latest bits.
Shutdown the browser [*], restart, and lo, Help->About
Plugins shows I'm now running Shockwave 6.0 r81, which is
the latest and greatest. Visit BHIT again. It _still_ says
I'm not running Shockwave, and offers me precisely the
release I'm running.

Quoted message said:

Same here, Mozilla on Linux. But it is correct, we don't
have Shockwave, we have Shockwave Flash plugins. Shockwave
is only available for Windows and Mac. Great innit?

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Clearly, BHIT care more about pushing Shockwave than
pushing their ideas, so sadly I'll be unable to read their
pearls of wisdom. It's sad, isn't it?

Quoted message said:

Very. I was looking for a laugh, instead I got annoying
website stupidity before it even starts.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Of course, were I a bad person, I'd suggest that as a
government funded body their website should comply with
the Disability Discrimination Act, and it's 99.9% certain
that a site which demands Flash in order to see its front
page isn't compliant. But making that complaint would be
childish, wouldn't it?

Quoted message said:

Not in the slightest. Never mind government funding, anyone
who makes a site/frontpage like this needs a healthy dose
of [censored] kicking.

I wasn't looking forward to the day when I would have enough
free time to fulfil my public obligation to have a look at
what my tax payer's money has bought me on the BeHIT web
pages. I'm very pleased to discover that they're so stupid
they've made their pages unreadable by
me. In all likelihood, like most of the folk who do that
kind of thing, they'll even be too stupid to ever
understand how stupid it is to make a web site like
that, so I'll never be able to read it.

How nice to start the day by crossing off a nasty chore I no
longer have to do!
--
Chris Malcolm [email hidden] +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
["]http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

Simon Brooke said:

Don't start.

The level of competence of the web 'design' industry is
enough to make any sensible person weep. Not one
commercial website in twenty conforms either to the
published standards or with the law on disability access,
and in general it seems the more money is spent the worse
the outcome.

Oops, I'm starting.

This is not helped by the belief that "With Microsoft anyone
can do it without any training, cause its so user friendly.
Even the secretary can administer a web site, as surely if
you know Word you can do anything - lower TCO, user friendly
operating system, perhaps we can use Nissan Micras to carry
our 40 tonne loads up the M1 by the same logic, after all
they scale outwards just like NT and you don't need
expensive HGV qualified drivers, wibble wibble...".

Too many developers are just used to point and drool in VB
without any understanding of whats going on. You can't just
let these people onto active web sites - as many of them
have never heard of things like Cross Site Scripting and SQL
Injection. "My site goes wrong when someone enters a single
quote into a text field - I wonder why". We're talking the
kind of people who'd email back your credit card details in
plain text as a receipt, and the people that employ them
don't know that there's anything wrong with this.

Fortunately things seem to be getting better. There's so
much security news in the news that I think people are
starting to take notice, and Microsoft's newer development
environments make it easier to avoid cross site scripting
and SQL Injection by providing the tools to avoid them and
making them more the natural choice to use, so the Point and
Drool crowd are steadily being dragged into the century of
the fruitbat.

I wonder if MS's poor site security and reliability
statistics are more to do with the attitude that anyone,
even without training or knowledge, can run a web site using
their tools than due to underlying faults in the tools
themselves. People using Linux based tools tend to know what
they're doing, for now, and big shops using J2EE tend to
have training plans and the infrastructure in place to make
sure someone there knows whats going on.

- Richard

--
_/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ Richard dot Corfield at ntlworld dot
com _/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/ _/ _/ Time is a one way street, _/
_/ _/_/ _/_/_/ Except in the Twilight Zone.

Quoted message said:

How nice to start the day by crossing off a nasty chore I
no longer have to do!

Sorry for this, but here's a link to the main page that
should bypass the sillyness[1]

<url:http://www.bhit.org/index-home.html>

Mark.

[1] You're missing out on an animation of a bike riding
across the screen, and the following:

"You may be aware that a Private Member’s Bill is currently
passing through Parliament. The enactment of the Bill will
make the wearing of helmets mandatory for all children
riding bicycles. We entirely endorse and support this Bill
as it helps ensure the safety and well being of children.

It has come to our attention that we are being quoted out of
context on a number of websites attempting to demonstrate
their opposition to helmet wearing.

The following links will direct you to websites, which
detail the efficacy of helmets from independent
organisations. All the research is peer vetted and none
based on opinion from an individual or group."

[then links to sites including BHSI]

On 29/6/04 12:35 am, in article
[email hidden], "Simon Brooke"

Quoted message said:

Don't start.

The level of competence of the web 'design' industry is
enough to make any sensible person weep. Not one
commercial website in twenty conforms either to the
published standards or with the law on disability access,
and in general it seems the more money is spent the worse
the outcome.

The is not something which is unique to dubious political
lobbying campaigns.

We are currently getting bids from several design companies
to redo the institute website. My impression is that the
good people are actually very good. But there are a lot of
cowboys out there.

Lots of fun with interrogating them on DDA, graceful
degradation, standards compliance etc.

..d

Ian G Batten <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

So, linking from Guy's pages, I decided to go and have a
chortle.

I was inspired by your example and so I guessed the address
to go and have a look. What *could* a certain Urban Cyclist-
UK correspondent *possibly* want with the domain name
bhit.org.uk? Most strange?

www.bhit.org.uk/index2.html gives you pretty much the same
browser experience in Moz as IE/Flash.

I notice that they are still displaying the Nationwide logo.
I thought they had pulled their suppport.

fwiw these guys designed it (and are proud enough of their
work to want a logo on the site) imagebox.co.ukimagebox.co.ukOpen ↗

If you ever want a quote from the site to use as a tagline
for a link then this rather sums up their pov

bhit.orgmad.htmlOpen ↗ "MAD riders never cycle without
their helmets"

best wishes james

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 09:59:34 +0100, David Martin
<[email hidden]> wrote in message
<[email hidden]>:

Quoted message said:

We are currently getting bids from several design companies
to redo the institute website. My impression is that the
good people are actually very good. But there are a lot of
cowboys out there. Lots of fun with interrogating them on
DDA, graceful degradation, standards compliance etc.

We got the Third Degree on that from B&Q when we did their
recruitment site. But we had expected it, so we knew more
about it than they did and ended up showing them things they
didn't know :-)

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after
posting. chapmancentral.co.ukchapmancentral.co.ukOpen ↗

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at
Washington University

On 29 Jun 2004 08:39:57 GMT, Mark Thompson
<[email hidden]> wrote in message
<[email hidden]>:

Quoted message said:

[then links to sites including BHSI]

Which is of course the opinions of one individual, with no
peer-vetting :-)

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after
posting. chapmancentral.co.ukchapmancentral.co.ukOpen ↗

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at
Washington University

Ian G Batten said:

So, linking from Guy's pages, I decided to go and have a
chortle.

First attempt: ``You don't appear to have the Shockwave
plug-in.'' OK, I've only got the Shockwave 5.0 plugin
installed, because Shockwave is the work of the devil, so
I followed the links and installed the latest bits.
Shutdown the browser [*], restart, and lo, Help->About
Plugins shows I'm now running Shockwave 6.0 r81, which is
the latest and greatest. Visit BHIT again. It _still_ says
I'm not running Shockwave, and offers me precisely the
release I'm running.

Clearly, BHIT care more about pushing Shockwave than
pushing their ideas, so sadly I'll be unable to read their
pearls of wisdom. It's sad, isn't it?

Of course, were I a bad person, I'd suggest that as a
government funded body their website should comply with
the Disability Discrimination Act, and it's 99.9% certain
that a site which demands Flash in order to see its front
page isn't compliant. But making that complaint would be
childish, wouldn't it?

ian

[*] Mozilla 1.6 on Solaris 10 build 55. I could put on
Mozilla 1.7, or indeed Solaris 10 build 58. I doubt
it'll help.

Me too! I'll never know what I'm missing. Did you also
notice that the html for even this page is invalid... no
doctype! I hope they didn't pay for this.

Steve

Ian G Batten <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

So, linking from Guy's pages, I decided to go and have a
chortle.

First attempt: ``You don't appear to have the Shockwave
plug-in.'' OK, I've only got the Shockwave 5.0 plugin
installed, because Shockwave is the work of the devil, so
I followed the links and installed the latest bits.
Shutdown the browser [*], restart, and lo, Help->About
Plugins shows I'm now running Shockwave 6.0 r81, which is
the latest and greatest. Visit BHIT again. It _still_ says
I'm not running Shockwave, and offers me precisely the
release I'm running.

You can bypass the rubbish at the beginning and go straight
to the rubbish inside by going to <bhit.orgindexOpen ↗
home.html>.

Click on "What We Do & Why" then on "Why Helmets" and you
will see they are /still/ making the claim:

"Properly worn bicycle helmets have been shown to reduce the
risk of head injury by 85% and the risk of brain injury by
almost 90%, and are effective in all forms of crashes
including those involving a motor vehicle."

So there we are. Helmets are even more effective at
preventing brain injury than they are at preventing all
forms of head injury including.

Nasty site altogether.

--
Dave...

On 29 Jun 2004 02:52:00 -0700, [email hidden] (Dave Kahn) wrote
in message <[email hidden]>:

Quoted message said:

"Properly worn bicycle helmets have been shown to reduce
the risk of head injury by 85% and the risk of brain injury
by almost 90%, and are effective in all forms of crashes
including those involving a motor vehicle."

If anyone can find a leaflet with that printed on, it would
be covered by the code of advertising practice.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after
posting. chapmancentral.co.ukchapmancentral.co.ukOpen ↗

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at
Washington University

Steve said:

Me too! I'll never know what I'm missing. Did you also
notice that the html for even this page is invalid... no
doctype! I hope they didn't pay for this.

Same goes for the company that produced the site:

validator.w3.orgcheckOpen ↗
agebox.co.uk/home.html

--
jc

Remove the -not from email

james said:

bhit.orgmad.htmlOpen ↗ "MAD riders never cycle
without their helmets"

Why use a standard scrollbar that any browser can understand
and provide nice shortcuts for when you can write your own
in Javascript?

- Richard

--
_/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ Richard dot Corfield at ntlworld dot
com _/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/ _/ _/ Time is a one way street, _/
_/ _/_/ _/_/_/ Except in the Twilight Zone.

In article <[email hidden]>,

Richard Corfield said:

Why use a standard scrollbar that any browser can
understand and provide nice shortcuts for when you can
write your own in Javascript?

Because you're being paid by the hour?

ian

Jeremy Collins said:

Steve said:

Me too! I'll never know what I'm missing. Did you also
notice that the html for even this page is invalid... no
doctype! I hope they didn't pay for this.

Same goes for the company that produced the site:

validator.w3.orgcheckOpen ↗
agebox.co.uk/home.html

If you want a real laugh, stick the BBC homepage through
w3 parser:

validator.w3.orgcheckOpen ↗

in message <[email hidden]>, Ian G Batten

(') said:

In article <[email hidden]-
dale.dyndns.org>, Richard Corfield

Quoted message said:

Why use a standard scrollbar that any browser can
understand and provide nice shortcuts for when you can
write your own in Javascript?

Because you're being paid by the hour?

I think, to be honest, its more about willie-waving than
billing. Peurile adolescent 'look how clever I am' showing
off. It's not just the small agencies who are guilty of this
sort of thing. Take a stroll round some of Britain's largest
and most expensive corporate web sites and you'll see it
everywhere.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke)
jasmine.org.uk~simonOpen ↗

;; Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change.

In article <[email hidden]>,

Simon Brooke said:

I think, to be honest, its more about willie-waving than
billing.

Maybe. But I've seen a lot of ludicrously complex code in
other fields which makes me think ``contractor paid by the
hour'' or ``mmmm, job security''.

Quoted message said:

the small agencies who are guilty of this sort of thing.
Take a stroll round some of Britain's largest and most
expensive corporate web sites and you'll see it
everywhere.

But probably outsourced. Web ``designers'', who typically
know nothing about either the web or design, have convinced
otherwise sensible IT Directors that it's so esoteric only
exotic specialists can do it.

ian