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Why Nominate a Site?

Whilst Phundria still wishes to remain anonymous for the time being, we can now receive nominations of sites which meet our criteria. We also have something serious to say, so please read this first:

Why Send Me Here Then?

If you've come this far you may not have guessed that this is a lampoon and you've been had. Read the introductory text and the nominations page again - carefully.

This lampoon exists to draw attention to those hucksters, crooks and charlatans who wish to ride roughshod over the World Wide Web and claim it as their own. We're not aiming at individuals, just misguided influential public sector and commercial sites, particularly those in the UK.

All the sites we want you to nominate should suffer seriously from some or all of the following faults:

They consume too much bandwidth through over-indulgence in, or careless use of graphics.
They're meaningless in a text only browser, because, for example there's no ALT text describing what each image means.
They are unintelligible to search engines because there's no non-image information in them.
They don't degrade gracefully in older browsers due to careless use of HTML.
They are inaccessible to many potential readers as a result of careless use of non-standard HTML extensions such as frames.

The more stars they get, the worse they are. Our Web Colossus Award should go to the worst sites of all.

We particularly deprecate public sector sites who use these techniques because it's OUR money they're spending, and OUR resources they're wasting. Publicly funded sites should be under an obligation to conform to standards.

The next category of villains are the media sites who over-use the whizz-bang features and shut folk out as a consequence.

We'd also like to shame those sites who offer free advertising to Mega$loth and NetsCrape by recommending their browsers as best for viewing. How do blind users on a speaking machine, or others using cellphone browsers react to that, we wonder?

We originally intended to seek out our own nominees, but thought it might be better if our readers did this for us. When we originally set out to find nominees, we encountered:

A publicly funded UK broadcast organisation which is only accessible to people using American graphics browsers, even to the extent of giving them free advertising!
A recently privatised commercial concern, in receipt of millions of pounds of public funds each year, which suffers from the same faults.
A crusading national newspaper of proven integrity in almost all respects, which suffers from the same faults.

In Phundria's opinion these are not just a matter for concern, they are, put simply, a public disgrace.

We don't wish to be seen as some sort of 'holier-than-thou' web police. We believe in the use of humour to make a point, hence this approach. We've taken great care to check and validate OUR pages so that they are accessible to all.

Phundria perseveres in its attempt to achieve perfection, though like all humans, we will fail in many ways, even though trying our best. It is vital for us to preserve the all-inclusive freedom of the Web originally conceived by its inventors in the face of those commercial concerns who would wish to take it over for their own ends.

True freedom of speech is the fundamental issue here, and it cannot be avoided. Monopolies, as well as governments can be tyrannical.

Seriously - What Can We Do About It?

Follow the published standards and validate your pages. Both are available for free on the Web, hence the links.

Always use the ALT attribute with your images.

Avoid the use of FRAMES and TABLES, if you can, particularly the former. If you must use these features, please ensure that you provide alternatives for browsers which do not support them, and ensure that they 'degrade gracefully'.

Do not use the following Tags:

MARQUEE, BLINK, EMBED, BGSOUND, JAVASCRIPT

Do not use the (FONT) FACE= attribute. None of us can guarantee what browser or fonts our readers are using. How they view your pages is the reader's choice, not ours.

These are all proprietary extensions to HTML and may not work, or work correctly, other than on the target browser.

Interestingly, it is possible for (non-compliant) HTML to be written such that it totally upsets these tags on their target machines.

An Apology

If you're the Chief Executive of one of the companies we've embarrassed, we apologise for your red face.

Phundria does not apologise for what we've done. You have been badly advised and supported by your so-called 'Web Designers', who aren't worth the appellation. If you feel like making heads roll then theirs are the ones to start with.

They have (and you have by implication), behaved in an anarchic way, on the anarchy that is the Web. That's not responsible behaviour is it?

You might start by asking how much NetsCrape or Mega$loth paid your company to endorse their products. Maybe your so-called 'Web Designers' have been bunged a few bob to do it. Company policy? We doubt it!

Thanks

If you've read all this, thanks for taking the trouble. You are our 'customer', and we appreciate it.

Nominations

Nominations of bloated or impenetrable websites are always welcomed. The sender of each successful nomination will be awarded a personal low-calorie 'Phundria Chocolate Watch' to display on his/her website if they so wish.

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