Craig Charles On-whine
So, as noticed by clem in our comments, www.craigcharles.co.uk has launched. With no Flash. You think I'd be happy, yes?
No. OK; let's go through this one. It starts with a pointless splash screen which does nothing except make it take longer to get into the site. Quite a bit longer, in some cases - you can only click on Craig himself, or the "Click to enter" sign at the bottom, which is rather counter-intuitive. The first thing you see after that is a message telling you that Craig Charles is online to "wet your taste buds". Oi! Still, at least they've now learnt that an ellipsis is three dots - we'll ignore the slightly dodgy spacing of them, though. Oh.
The next point is the worst, though. All the pages are done as big 760 x 560 graphics. This is stupid for a hell of a lot of reasons - for a start, it takes ages to load, the pages can't resize to fit your browser window. Even worse, they've not added any alt text to the images at all - meaning blind people are cut off from the site completely. They're not making it any easier for themselves, either - each time they want to update the site, instead of changing a bit of HTML, they've got to alter the graphic. Absolutely ludicrous.
Irritatingly, the main index page uses graphics which don't give any indication as to what section you're about to enter; you have to look to the filenames its linking to in order to see what you're about to look at; again, hardly intuitive. (Just having text links would have been nicer - currently, you have no idea which pages you've actually seen until you click on them, wheras with just text, the links change colour when you've seen them. However, a lot of sites have this problem...)
The graphics themselves are OK. The cartoons are quite fun, but there are nasty touches here and there; look at the bad version of the Dwarf logo on the Dwarf page (nice to see they want to produce something a bit different for that page that we haven't seen before, though). But the worst thing about it is that the graphics are done as JPEGs; a lossy format that was designed specifically for photographs, where the artefacts don't show up as much. Using them for text is stupid (if they were going to do the site like this, they should have at least used PNGs) - hence, the site is littered with horrible artefacts around the lettering, which looks terrible. So, they've unwisely used graphics instead of normal HTML, and then they haven't even done it right. Well done.
Just look at this page on Takeshi's Castle for a roundup of the problems. Artefacting everywhere (even on the background!), awful spelling and punctuation ("voice over" for voiceover, the needless dot after the exclamation marks, and worst of all, the actual misspelling of the name of the show!), and the horribly lo-res version of the logo at the bottom. Nice cartoon of Charles there, though. There is a similar standard on every other page.
I'm not just being anal here; the maintainers really aren't helping themselves. For instance: the don't provide a title for the pages. Well, I lie, they do - view the source, and they actually give each page the name "Untitled Document". Amongst other things, this means that when Google crawls the site, it won't be able to give the results a meaningful title. I don't mean to be rude, but the entire site appears to have been put together by someone with no understanding of how the web works whatsoever.
On a more positive note, there are some nice snippets of info on the site. He's currently working on a children's book called Scary Fairy, Snotty Poems For Rotten Kids; he'll be on an episode of Weakest Link which he recorded recently on '90's Icons' (the same page also mentions the Changing Faces news we've mentioned before, which sounds interesting); that Craig is currently writing "a family show which he plans to tour in the near future"; some interesting dirt on Ripley's Believe It Or Not (or 'Ripley' as they seem to want to call it; FOR FUCKS SAKE, HOW DIFFICULT WOULD IT BE TO CHECK YOUR SPELLING AND PUNCTUATION?); that in movie stuff he has just finished shooting Fated where he plays a DJ called Pedro (which has been mentioned before, but we'd forgotten about), and is due to start shooting The Dealer soon (the mention about the Dwarf movie being due to start shooting later this year is so vague as to be worth absolutely nothing). There's also some nice samples from his current bad, The Eye, from an album due to be released soon. All interesting snippets, and it looks like all this is due to be expanded on a lot more when the site fully goes online, which is excellent. It's exactly what the site should be doing.
There's loads more I could say, but I think you've heard enough. It's apparently a preview site; please, let the full site completely change the way everything is done. Stupidly, though, I still prefer it to Flash...
Comments
Well said John!
Though it does say "Preview Site" in the corner, maybe there will be a vast improvment if this isn't the finished article. Hopefully they'll read your review! :)
Posted by Drzymala at May 9, 2004 09:38 AM
Being the optimistic soul I am, I suspect it's just snapshots of the intended Flash layout slapped together as a preview until they finish adding sparkly bits and sliding images to the final version.
Posted by Antony Sidwell at May 9, 2004 10:11 AM
Holy christ that's a poor site. As for putting a preview site up, what's the point? You may as well do the job properly before you let it out for people like John to tear into. The silly fools.
Posted by Cappsy at May 9, 2004 12:20 PM
So that's 3 Dwarfers to get their own sites now...
And sadly Idon't like any of them...
BTW is that supposed to be a skutter on the RD section? Because if it is somone needs to learn how to DRAW!!!
And I could have sworn it was "Timeslides" and not "Time Slides"
Posted by MJN SEIFER at May 9, 2004 12:44 PM
>>>> Holy christ that's a poor site. As for putting a preview site up, what's the point? You may as well do the job properly before you let it out for people like John to tear into. The silly fools
I agree Cappsy. I also believe we died, and were, indeed, resurrected.
Posted by Drzymala at May 9, 2004 12:45 PM
MATT, YOU'VE TURNED IN A CUNTING GREAT RED PENCIL!
Posted by Cappsy at May 9, 2004 12:53 PM
Had I quoted Series 1-6 you wouldn't have a problem.
Get over it :P
:D
Posted by Drzymala at May 9, 2004 01:03 PM
I have to stick up for Norman Lovett's site, as it's really good.
Thanks.
Posted by Darrell Jones at May 9, 2004 01:29 PM
I do too, Norms a top bloke too :D
I don't mind Robs or Chris' either, to link, yes Flash is a bastard, but I've never had a crappy puter that makes Flash too much of a prob to surf. I think we can be glad that the guys are all getting sites on the net.
Except for Craig who is a cock
Posted by Drzymala at May 9, 2004 02:25 PM
> I have to stick up for Norman Lovett's site, as it's really good.
Content-wise, Norm's, Rob's and Chris's are all ace. Unfortunately, the sites themselves are all poorly designed and inaccessible. But I agree that Norm's is the best of a bad bunch.
Posted by Ian Symes at May 9, 2004 02:29 PM
Content is ace, not too arsed about design. As for inaccessible, thats balls, if it was inaccessible how would you know the contents ace?
Posted by Drzymala at May 9, 2004 02:57 PM
I agree that Norm's is the best of a bad lot. But it *is* accessible to the blind - the misuse of alt tags means that they couldn't navigate the front page. And the HTML is terrible; no sense of structure to it. And the spash screen is pointless. And so is the fixed width. Etc etc etc. Of course, some of these problems apply to TOS as well...
Like I said, I'll review all the official sites at some point; but first I want to get the G&T relaunch out the way, or else it would be rather hypocritical. G&T does better accessibility-wise than any of the official sites, but we're not perfect by a long stretch (a lot of the site doesn't validate), and as I've said before, I think certain parts of the site are ugly (the front page and the logo, for instance).
Posted by John Hoare at May 9, 2004 03:26 PM
Oh, and when it does launch properly, I'll cry if it's a Flash site. Like I've said before, even forgetting the myriad of problems with Flash, I just fucking hate navigating them.
Posted by John Hoare at May 9, 2004 03:39 PM
You going to review the fan sites too? I'm interested as to what you recon to the amature jobs too.
Posted by Cappsy at May 9, 2004 04:00 PM
I don't know. Possibly. The thing is, I'd be far, far, far less harsh on the web design of fansites - because they're not supposed to be professional jobs. Wheras with the official sites, somebody was *paid* to do them, so they really should be put together a bit better by people who knew what they're doing.
I certainly prefer The White Hole to Chris, Craig, Norm and Rob's sites.
The only reason G&T is OK (and I mean that from an accessibility POV, rather than visually - as you know, I'm not keen how quite a bit of it looks visually at the moment, although I like some of it) is that I take a personal interest in web design. People shouldn't have to take a personal interest in web design in order to produce an accessible website - but unfortunately, due to the mainly rubbish tools avaliable at the moment, people often do have to write it by hand in order to create a completely accessible site. This is a bad state of affairs; hopefully tools will become avaliable in time that means this isn't the case.
Posted by John Hoare at May 9, 2004 04:06 PM
>>myriad of problems
Grammar, boy. (I've probably spelt that wrong, now - the irony!)
There's no 'of' after 'myriad'. Thought you should know.
Posted by si at May 9, 2004 04:09 PM
Gah. A widespread misuse, I think, but that's no excuse.
I'M AS BAD AS POET CRAIG CHARLES.
Posted by John Hoare at May 9, 2004 04:11 PM
I gotta say I'm none too impressed with the website. Craig Charles himself is a great guy in many senses of the word, but this website doesn't do him or any of his work justice!
Please - *in a moment of temporary insanity* we'd prefer flash to this!
Posted by Kamma at May 9, 2004 04:14 PM
Forget the
>>Please - *in a moment of temporary insanity* we'd prefer flash to this!
It's the
>>Craig Charles himself is a great guy in many senses of the word
that I'm not too sure about.
Posted by si at May 9, 2004 04:25 PM
Well I take a personal interest in web design myself. So much so that I'm going to study Web Development BSc from September. Until that point, however, I'm sticking with Dreamweaver and my basic knowledge of HTML for the odd little tweak. Dreamweaver is pretty good to make a nice looking accessable web site. Having said that, i;ve not really done any proper tests on The White Hole to see just HOW accessible it really is.
Posted by Cappsy at May 9, 2004 06:41 PM
I should have guessed that, really; visually, The While Hole is lovely. Far nicer than G&T.
I've got a few suggestions for accessibility - I'll mail you in a few days. Kick me up the arse if I haven't.
Posted by John Hoare at May 9, 2004 06:57 PM
Excellent stuff John, I'm going to have a small re-jig round soon anyway so the articles and other stuff are in a more logical place.
Boot ready for kicking. 2 days and counting.
Posted by Cappsy at May 9, 2004 07:14 PM
Web Development BSc??!!!
Posted by Mr Flibble at May 9, 2004 10:20 PM
And the BSc stands for 'bronze swimming certificate'.
(Come on. It had to be done sooner or later.)
Posted by Ian Symes at May 9, 2004 10:23 PM
Although I'd have preferred it to have been later.
Posted by John Hoare at May 9, 2004 10:26 PM
"Web Development BSc??!!!"
Aye lad, you can get an Honours Degree studying just about anything computer related these days.
Posted by Cappsy at May 9, 2004 10:33 PM
Speaking of which...
Posted by John Hoare at May 10, 2004 05:03 AM
In fact, you can get a degree studying any old crap these days.
Take me and my Marketing degree (on 9th July).
Posted by Joey at May 10, 2004 12:45 PM
Just had a closer gander at Craig's site, I must say (aside from the myriad spelling errors that have already been pointed out) that my favourite bit of the entire site is in the "Poetry" section :
"When Craig was 12 years old he won the Guardian poetry award, beating the runner up to the competition, who was 33 years old!"
So, wait. Let me get this straight. He won the competition... *and beat the runner up in the process*?!?!? What an incredible achievement!
Posted by Seb at May 15, 2004 07:46 PM
Maybe he won it and they had a fight in the car park afterwards.
Posted by Ian Symes at May 15, 2004 07:48 PM
"But it *is* accessible to the blind - the misuse of alt tags means that they couldn't navigate the front page."
Could somebody please tell me how a website could be accessible to the blind?
Sounds, braille? I'm being serious.
Posted by jesley carrion at May 21, 2004 11:31 AM
You can download programmes that read the text out loud, Stephen Hawking style. The ways in which websites are made inaccessible is when the text is presented in Flash or as pictures, where the programme can't recognise it. You can, however, make pictures accessible by including ALT text (that's what you see when you hover over it), which is read aloud instead. When there's no ALT text, as on Craig's site, it might as well be a blank page.
Posted by Ian Symes at May 21, 2004 11:35 AM
Yes, speech synthesis.
Or a braille screen or printer.
Posted by Mr Flibble at May 21, 2004 08:51 PM
>>it might as well be a blank page.
How ironic. It seems Craig's spies have done the right thing.
Posted by Joey at May 23, 2004 10:23 AM
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