In the day job I am responsible for getting a website relaunched. Part of this involves looking at what other people are doing and stealing ideas. Part of that involves usability testing and making sure stuff just works. Another part, and one I hope to develop once the site is launched, involves taking our information and, well, architecting it.
One of our sales team asked a question this morning, which I thought would be easily answered using the venerable PubMed website and comparing their answers with our own data. So off I toddled, and spent a few minutes getting really frustrated with their new site.
Don’t get me wrong: I love PubMed; I always have, ever since we moved from SilverPlatter. But this is putting a real strain on our relationship: where is the ‘advanced search’?
Spot the difference
I finally tried it in a different browser
Oh, man. The NCBI budget dwarfs ours, and nobody thought to check that?
Shocking that is, care to reveal which browser is which? It looks fine on IE6 (that’s at work, i can’t do anything about the monstrosity) and Firefox (Windows). And I am still getting used to that redesign too, but I like it so far.
It was Safari on Windows. Haven’t had chance to try it on my Mac, yet.
well, it works in mozilla ^^ … I’m sure they couldn’t check ALL browsers people use these days, right?!
Um, yes Åsa, they could. And they should–you should also read up on the concept of ‘supported browsers’. This isn’t 1999 any more.
“It was Safari on Windows.”
Does anyone other than you actually use that? I’ve seen people use IE on Mac (it was horrible sight, but I’ve seen it…) but never Safari on Windows.
Funnily enough, it’s the techy people who do, because they appreciate the rendering speed (very fast, in case that isn’t clear).
@Åsa – Richard is right. Our web manager tests on all kinds of platforms (or uses tools to do it).
@Eva – I have used Safari on windows on occasion. If you have iTunes installed then it tries to install Safari in the sly.
@Richard – my colleague Patti Biggs has commented:
That’s very strange, Frank. why isn’t it working on this XP machine?
Yet another reason to use GoPubMed instead:
http://gopubmed.org/web/gopubmed/
OK, David, I think that place has completely different issues!
You changed your browser’s or operating system’s default font-size or DPI. Since you tried two browsers, you either did it twice, or it was the OS’s font-size or DPI settings.
Why that should break the PubMed website is beyond me. Even if it’s true.
“Advanced Search”?
Real users use the tags, surely? I’ll see your Safari for Windows and raise you a [au], [ta] and [dp].
Of course, finding the document that tells you all this has become increasingly challenging over the years…
Oh that is really special. The website only works if you set your font rilly rilly small. So much for dynamic elements.
Browser font sizes are based on OS, browser setting, and then page setting. You chnaged one of the first two, and are now having to compensate by changing the 3rd to be very small.
I do the same thing… and have the same problem with many sites, MSN, etc.
I assure you that I haven’t changed OS font settings (I probably wouldn’t know how to) and I should be able to set my browser fonts to my satisfaction without having to worry about other sites hiding elements because of it.
Richard> I thought it was obvious that I was sarcastic about “all the browsers”…. apparently not. I seem to have lost that little 😉 on the ned.
Anyway, I know supported browser talk. I know what you should look for. And I thought I knew how much money that would cost (especially considering the whole amount of redesigning the wohle thing which means the “checking the browser support” is a minimum one).
with that I’ll retreat and not write more sarcastic comments without a mark 😉
Hah, sorry Åsa—that’s the danger with writing sans visual cues, eh?
bq. Um, yes Åsa, they could. And they should—you should also read up on the concept of ‘supported browsers’. This isn’t 1999 any more.
Hells yeah!
I tore one of my programmers a new…well, I can’t say cos this is a family friendly site, but he released an updated GUI without checking first either A) browser compatibility and B) (almost as importantly) User compatibility.
Cue many phone calls and me screaming, “revert to the previous version NOW…”
“Architecting”? What a monstrous carbuncle! Hope your tongue and cheek were in apposition…
Eva: personnally I find Safari better for surfing the internet in general. However for work I use Firefox because of its numerous addons making it a wonderful working tool. AnywayRichard I’m really surprised too by this mistake. What we do at novoseek (http://www.novoseek.com) before releasing a new feature is to try it on several browsers and browsers versions. There are several web-services out there available to do that 😉Best