Contents:

1. bugs / usability problems
2. textual errors
3. now fixed

1. Things that are wrong with the new Oxford web site http://www.ox.ac.uk/

• Some "Quicklinks" (e.g. library) merely duplicate items on main page - implying that they are hard to find on the main page.
• Try pressing [Go] without selecting a Quicklink!
  • a branded list of Quicklinks would be a more obvious response than an unbranded blank page.
  • this has been patched today (Wed 24th) so now it takes you to the front page (but a new copy in history) I guess this is much better but still more confusing that a simple page listing the quicklinks would be.

• having  alt=""  might satisfy an automated accessibility check but isn't very helpful for disabled users looking at images.

  • especially when the image is the only content of an href!

• The 'Skip to content' link http://www.ox.ac.uk/#primary-content goes nowhere (on the front page, it's ok elsewhere.)

• 'news' is difficult to find from front page
  • all the links on the front page point to 'unfriendly' coldfusion URLs (then rewrite to 'friendly' URLs)

• Many many broken links - for an illustration of just how emabarrassing this is, see http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=university+of+oxford&meta=&btnG=Google+Search

  • It may also cause problems for Google (local and public) when both forms of a URL get indexed
• on a 1024x768 screen, the A-Z of colleges boxes take up so much space that you can't see the results underneath without scrolling
• if you turn off Javascript, the headings on the home page pop up a big picture you cannot remove (and then hitting the back button does not take you to the home page, but a previously visited site) [nb you can remove it by clicking the 'close window' button on the top RH corner. ~janetmck]

• attachment:BugRiddenScreenShot.jpg screen shot showing lots of bugs (FF 2.0.0.8 on Win XP)

• Why weren't stakeholders given a preview of the new page and a chance to comment?
• The index page references 73 images in its source, very few of which are visible when you initially view the page (as they are hidden by css). This is an unfortunate blend of the disadvantages of images (the 73 images total nearly 2 mb) without the benefits (the visual richness which images give a page). The heavy size of the page will make it very hard for people on low bandwidth links to access the page. This is bad for any page but doubly so for an index page, as it is a common point of entry.
• [There is no mention of 'Information for Staff' on the front page] - actually there is, it's the 'Staff' link under the 'quick links' drop-down. Not obvious but there.

• Links to http://www.ox.ac.uk/aboutoxford/maps/map.pdf are broken -- this was one of the most popularly linked pages on www.ox.ac.uk!

• IE7 freezes when clicking any of the main headings (Admissions, Divisions, Colleges, etc) on the homepage. Image animation is displayed but overlaying text never appears. Browser then becomes unresponsive. Tested on Vista and Windows XP.

• Try browsing http://www.ox.ac.uk/index.html with images off.

• The use of img tags without an src attribute is not only invalid xhtml, but results in a "missing image" icon being displayed in IE6. (eg at the bottom of this page: http://www.ox.ac.uk/this_is_oxford.html)

• On my screen (Mac Pro, using Firefox or Safari), the "blue" of the web site is quite different from what I would think of as Oxford blue, and certainly different from the previews I get (using Mac Preview) of the .eps files in the Downloads section.

• The raw code confirms the colour difference - http://www.ox.ac.uk/css/front/structure.css includes background: #002D62 (#header-wrapper), whereas http://www.ox.ac.uk/staff/branding_toolkit/the_brand_colours/index.html states #002147 should be used.

• It takes a good fifteen seconds to load on my PDA, and the layout thereon is horrible. However, I'd like to speak in favour of its design when viewed in a more normal browser: it's simple, sleek and sophisticated.
• in Opera Mini (on a Nokia 6230i) the homepage's "Skip to content" link appears as the last link on the page.

• Many of the colleges are positioned in the wrong place on the individual (Open StreetMap) college maps:

  • All Souls, Brasenose, and Corpus Christi, appear in Christchurch [sic] Meadows
  • Green, Kellogg, Somerville, and St Antony's all appear on Winchester Road instead of Woodstock/Banbury Roads
  • Harris Manchester, New and St Cross all appear in a field outside Kirtlington
  • Nuffield is a couple of streets away from where it should be
  • Oriel is in the same place as Pembroke
  • [2007-10-23T21:44:00] the map links for most of the incorrect ones have now disappeared, the address for All Souls has two postcodes, and Oriel's location is now correct.
  • Blackfriars, Greyfriars, Campion Hall, St Benet's and Wycliffe Hall are missing map links
  • RPC and St Stephen's House are in the wrong places

  • NB geo data for all Oxford Uni colleges, depts etc is available from [http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/oxpoints/oxpoints.xml]

• Windows Pocket PC 2003 plus Internet Explorer on my Siemens Pocket Loox: After 15 secs of loading I get a pop up "the page you are looking for cannot be found". If I dismiss this then I see tiny tiny text and
  • Quicklinks hyperlink
  • Quicklinks drop down menu
  • Staff, (current, alumini, media) hyperlinks
  • Search text box with radio buttons and submit button
  • 'ADMISSIONS' (in large capitals) with 'ADMISSIONS' in small capitals overlayed on top of it. Following that there are 5 hyperlinks.
  • 'DIVISIONS' (in large capitals) with 'DIVISIONS' in small capitals overlayed on top of it. Again, there are 5 hyperlinks.
  • That's it, no more content at all! So most of the page is missing.
  • [Nov 6] Similarly for IE in WM5, scroll down the page and you get sections like the following:
    • attachment:screen2WM5.gif
• on submitting the "Contact the webmaster" form there is no confirmation, no link back to the page you were last viewing, you just get bounced back to the homepage.

• College map page (http://www.ox.ac.uk/colleges/collegemap.html) and A-Z (http://www.ox.ac.uk/colleges/colleges_az.html) broken on IE7 -- drop-down menus in navigation bar drop behind page content.

• Colleges A-Z doesn't appear on drop-down menu for 'colleges' tab (only on lh-nav once you're in the 'colleges' section)
• Front page cluttered and unfriendly to dyslexic and partially sighted readers. No obvious link to an access-friendly page, though there is a long spiel about the site as a whole satisfying the W3C guidelines.
• Reverse-colour crest may look ok on a display, but printed on a letterheading (on laser or inkjet printer) the mass of black is striated and sometimes bleeds into the spidery white crest.

• Fails accessibility tests for mobile devices <http://ready.mobi/results.jsp?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ox.ac.uk%2F&locale=en_EN>. Four .mobi domains redirect to the main university page, and are at risk of being suspended if these issues are not fixed.

• Google has indexed the RationalMediaURLs, rather than the useful ones, see top hit for "india connection oxford university" which appears to be "www.ox.ac.uk/track.rm?id=517&from=44" rather than the better "http://www.ox.ac.uk/research/research_showcase/showcase_projects/the_india_connection.html"

• Google appears to have indexed 163.1.0.45, which looks like it is the old content.

2. Errors in text

• Colleges A-Z shows Queen's College. Correct title is The Queen's College.

• Style guide (http://www.ox.ac.uk/staff/branding_toolkit/writing_and_style_guide/#aurls) says "Occasionally an URL will not start with www. – in these instances, the leading http:// must be included without the www. for the URL to work" -- this is simply not true (though including http:// at the beginning of *all* web addresses helps disambiguate).

• http://www.ox.ac.uk/staff/branding_toolkit/writing_and_style_guide/#adates says "Do not use ‘20th century’ (i.e. superscript)" but no superscript appears. Also, "BC and AD should be in small capitals. bc follows the date; ad precedes it" -- smallcaps are missing.

• http://www.ox.ac.uk/staff/branding_toolkit/writing_and_style_guide/#aabbreviations_acronyms has the sentence "Do not use a full stop at the end of picture captions or at the end of headings" unterminated by a full stop despite not being a caption/heading.

• URLs on individual college info pages are inconsistent about whether they have trailing slashes.

• http://www.ox.ac.uk/enterprise/innovation/intellectual.html - "Oxford' intellectual property" should be "Oxford's intellectual property"

3. Now corrected or not a problem

• no direct links to key resources such as Webmail, Weblearn, OLIS, Oxlip - navigating to these resources is now too hard. (Weblearn and Webmail have now appeared as Quicklinks) OLIS and Oxlip are only a few clicks away
• Visually hard to navigate - uniform mass of small pale-blue text on dark blue background. - opinion
• CSS is invalid, references non-standard opacity property, and non-existent vertical-text property - opacity is a CS3 candidate recommendation
• Department/college A-Z: have to guess the letter of the college you want rather than being able to browse them all - (this has now been corrected)
  • About page claims "The University uses Google Search Appliance, accessible through the search box in the header of all pages. Internal users may also use ht://dig to search Oxford's site including intranet pages, a link to which is also provided on search results pages." When no link to ht://dig is on the search results pages. - (this has now been corrected)

• pages aren't valid XHTML, '&' needs to be changed to '& amp;' amongst other URL form GET problems - (this has now been corrected)

• 'This is Oxford' on the home page - what on earth is this for? What sort of information am I expecting to see? - (this has now been corrected)
• Can't get to full form for contact search except by doing a simple search for "people" - (this has now been corrected)

• Breaking OSM licence: http://www.ox.ac.uk/applications/dynamic/map.rm?postcode=OX1+3JP&location=St%20John%27s%20College&id=483 - no attribution

  • (this has now been corrected)

• Input possible through URL query string; used unchecked in title, e.g. http://www.ox.ac.uk/applications/dynamic/map.rm?postcode=OX1+3JP&location=unwanted%20data&id=483

  • This isn't checked at all, allowing cross-site-scripting injection of JS, etc. Eg http://www.ox.ac.uk/applications/dynamic/map.rm?postcode=OX1+3JP&location=%3Cscript%3Ealert%28%22Hello%22%29%3B%3C%2Fscript%3E&id=483 (this has now been corrected)

  • http://ox.ac.uk/ does not redirect to http://www.ox.ac.uk/ -- which is entirely correct so has been moved to the 'not an issue' section

  • NO COLDFUSION ERROR HANDLING: (in certain applications) e.g. http://www.ox.ac.uk/applications/dynamic/map.rm : it does seems to exist here though: http://www.ox.ac.uk/track.rm but not in certain parameter contexts : http://www.ox.ac.uk//track.rm?id= [all corrected/added now]

• http://www.ox.ac.uk/enterprise/innovation/intellectual.html has an unnecessary '>' on the first line of text

• http://www.ox.ac.uk/colleges/collegiate.html - "comprising of" should be just "comprising". (URL now changed to http://www.ox.ac.uk/colleges/the_collegiate_system/index.html)

• on the "About this site" page (http://www.ox.ac.uk/about_this_site.html) the site address is given as "www.ox.ac.uk/" in direct contravention of style guide (http://www.ox.ac.uk/staff/branding_toolkit/writing_and_style_guide/#aurls)

• http://www.ox.ac.uk/staff/branding_toolkit/writing_and_style_guide/#aabbreviations_acronyms has "acronymns"

• http://www.ox.ac.uk/staff/branding_toolkit/branding_marks_and_logo/secondary_device.html has a "p>" at the beginning of the second para under "Small Positive Version"