Silicon Glen, Scotland > Web usability > Pants websites

Why the Telford College website is pants


"Edinburgh's Telford College - The College that gives you everything!"
Including a spurious error in Google!

I'm not using an early version of a browser, I'm using Mozilla 1.5, which is two years more up to date than IE6 and which was released only a few weeks ago. Having this error page as your first entry in a search engine leaves some room for improvement.

Google results

Moving along, we get to the homepage. Tread carefully here, there's an outbreak of scrollbars waiting to get you. I counted four, that's three more than most sites. Perhaps using their interest in scroll bars, the college could capitalise on the student's interest in drinking bars and the use of "scroll" to mean a degree certificate. Thus they could rename the student's favourite watering hole the "Scroll Bar". On the other hand, maybe not!

scroll bars

Now where is a scroll bar (the graphical sort, not the drinking establishment) when you really need one? This page could certainly use one, how else can I get to the content off the top and bottom of the page? The main vertical scroll bar is already at the top, so how do I get to the course information which is off the top of the page?

missing scroll bar

Moving along, we get to the basics of the web again. The first principle of web navigation is that you should be able to click on a link to follow it. Here the highlighted text invites me to click on my chosen course. I did, nothing happened. Still it did auto highlight, a useful feature but not as good as a link that works - does the college teach web design?

the link which isn't