YOU MUST BE JOKING

All right. It's great that you've decided to upgrade your web site, Jerry. Really. So we're going to help you out. Honest. Because there's a lot of room for improvement.

First -- lose the Flash intro. Unless you're an animator or you're in the entertainment industry, there's no earthly reason for it. (And "Explore our Universe"? Are you going to be training in Russia for the next Space Shuttle mission?) Check this out: "Flash 99% Bad" by Jakob Nielsen. (If you don't know who Jakob Nielsen is, you should junk the whole web site idea and go back to printing pamphlets.) Now Jakob has just inked a deal with Macromedia to consult with them as they develop Flash MX, but seriously, stay away from the glitzy, useless fluff.

Please notice that our links (such as the Jakob Nielsen one in the previous paragraph) open in separate windows. That's to keep folks from navigating away from the site. Tell your web developer to include "TARGET=_blank" in your links -- unless you want people to wander away from your site.

Now, after the Flash intro (shudder), we're deposited onto your Bay Bridge opinion piece, written, if memory serves, before you were sworn in as Mayor. Um... hate to break it to ya... you lost that battle... MOVE ON. Isn't there a more current event/crisis/issue you can yammer on about? Or are you tapped out of ideas? Whatever your next opinion piece is, it probably shouldn't be your home page.

Your navigation is sketchy. The order varies from page to page, and entire pages go missing. You need to have text nav at the bottom of your site. None of your images have ALT tags, which describe the images to individuals who may be using a text reader to visit your site. (Another link you should know: Section 508. It describes the Federal standards for web accessibility. Yes, we know, this is a personal web site, but wouldn't it be nice if our visionary Mayor actually showed some personal vision by adopting these standards now, instead of later? Same thing goes for the heinous Oaklandnet web site as well. That's a lawsuit waiting to happen.)

Ah, the Photo Gallery. Without explanatory text on the page, we can only speculate as to what is happening in the photos. We have so many questions. Why are you annoying that woman in the lower lefthand photo? Why is that white guy giving you a check? Are you yodelling in that lower righthand picture? And once again, you need ALT tags.

Your Media Resources page seems to be stuck in 1998. Hellooooo -- there's been some changes. Where's KNTV? And what on God's green earth is the purpose of the page, anyway? Seems like wasted real estate.

Survey Page: "There are no surveys at this time." Then why is the page up? When you have survey information, put the page up, and not before.

For some weird reason, the "Contact" info page opens up as a small, useless window in Netscape, and doesn't work at all in IE (404). Just make it a regular page, dammit. Geez.

Your biography text is an image. That is sooooo stupid. Make it HTML. Duh!

We're just scratching the surface as to the problems this site has. (Color scheme: not our choice, but it's your site. As to the "Vision -- Leadership -- Integrity" thing, well, you can call yourself Marie Queen of Rumania for all we care. But you may want to watch it on the hyperbole.)

Our suggestion: take the site down, start again, and test it using different browsers before putting it back up. Honestly, you're just embarrassing yourself otherwise.

Don't believe us? Well, let us congratulate you on your recent win from "Web Pages That Suck." We made you an especially ugly button that you can put on your site to announce your award. Just right-click on the image, save it to disk and add it to your code!

An honor well deserved.     KIJE Archive Home