Thoughts on web development and technologies by Peter Gasston
New Labour website launches
Just a day after the Prime Minister announces he’s to step down in June, triggering a leadership contest, the Labour party launches their redesigned website.
The first things I noticed were the Web 2.0 stylings; the homepage features a YouTube video, a Google Maps mashup, and a pseudo-‘latest comments’ box. There is a link to a Blogs section (although there are no blogs there yet), and podcasts and RSS feeds are prominent.
The design is clear and simple, with an attention-grabbing splash image. The navigation is straightforward and obvious, with the key options running along the top and a multitude of further options at the bottom of the page. Internal navigation is not quite as simple; the links on the right-hand of the content pages look more like static lists.
Disappointingly, there a few basic validation errors in the code; missing alt tags, inline JavaScript (and a couple of JS errors), some tags which haven’t been closed properly; all simple to fix, but coupled with the lack of content in some areas it makes me think the site was rushed online to take advantage of yesterday’s news.