molly.com
Thursday 3 November 2005
An Open Letter to Disney Store UK
Dear Disney Store UK,
I would write this to you directly via your site feedback page but it is throwing Access database errors. The email appears to be down as well. So instead, I’m going to write my letter here in a public forum in the hopes that someone from your team sees it and takes heed.
Your so-called redesign is a travesty, a tragedy, and an embarrassment. Your prior store was not only far more beautiful visually, but was a magnificent example of standards-based design. Perhaps more importantly, the site was also accessible under the UK’s Disability Discrimination Act (DDA).
You now have a site that regresses back to all the bad habits that have hurt the progress of Web development and design. Here’s what you can expect from what you’ve done to your site:
- Performance will become slower. Due to the overblown markup and inclusion of massive JavaScripts within each individual document, your site will slow down considerably. Not only that, but because of the table-based layout method, each page loaded has to not only redraw each of those tables (which takes two passes of a browser rather than one) it’s carrying both the presentational and behavioral baggage from page to page. I feel really sorry for your potential customers at large, and even more so for those who are on dialup. I really do.
- Your site will become significantly more difficult to manage. Want to change something in the visual presentation of the site? You now have to change it in every single document. So, instead of opening a style sheet, making a change in less than a minute, and having that change automatically distributed to all pages linked to that style sheet, you will have to search and replace. That adds a margin for critical errors, which can in turn make changes even more complicated. The same holds true of your scripts, which are embedded into each document. You’ve completely lost the ability to effectively manage your site, much less redesign it effectively when the time comes.
- Your site will become more expensive to maintain. Because of the document management issue, money and time will be spent every time a change is required. Your bandwidth costs are going to skyrocket, particularly now as we approach the holiday season as your traffic is likely to increase significantly during this time.
- The site may experience a drop in search rankings across all engines. Even if that doesn’t happen, apparently, according to Google, you are selling a product called spacer gif. What in the world are those? Oh yeah, wait! I remember! They’re an outdated, unnecessary method in today’s contemporary design and development approach. Spacer gifs, in case you don’t know what you’re pimping to the world, are a means of keeping table based layouts from collapsing in on themselves. And now, as Google so clearly tells us, they are part of your catalog. I’m not convinced you’ll get much sales on spacer gifs, but you never know.
- The site is unusable for any blind person who might like to visit. But you know, blind people probably don’t want to buy Disney products for themselves, or their children and families anyway, right?
For taking a beautiful design developed with all of today’s modern approaches that gave you so many benefits, made us proud of you, and provided a shining example of effective use of markup, CSS and accessibility features and re-doing it using outdated and inaccessible methods I say shame on you and I repeat, this is a travesty, a tragedy, an embarrassment.
Shame on you Disney.
Molly E. Holzschlag
Group Lead, Web Standards Project (WaSP)
Filed under: web design and development, WaSP
Posted by: Molly | 9:40 am |
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:01 am
What were they thinking?
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:01 am
Nice one Molly! There are too many new sites that are ignoring accessibility, and as for Disney I can’t believe they regressed, what where they thinking?
I can only hope they look, take heed and sort it.
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:04 am
After reading your blog for a while now, I must say how disappointed I am to your attitude and serious lack of professionalism.
If the web site in question is as bad as you describe it here, publically then I think a far better approach would have been to air your concerns in private.
To make the following suggestions as you have, is not here nor there. It’s not for you to make that call - how dare you make that judgement, and worse still, to make it in public.
Any creditability that you had has now gone clean out of the window in my view. The least that you could do now is to release an apology, and learn from your mistake.
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:06 am
Molly, you are a hero. I really hope they respond to this.
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:10 am
Shouldn’t you be searching for the source of the Blue Nile Dr?
For the size they are and who they are it’s an awful attempt, too many companies are ignoring their responsibilities in regards to accessibility and the more naming and shaming that is done the better.
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:21 am
Methinks Dr. Livingston doesn’t understand that my job is a standards educator and evangelist. That means doing what I did, particularly as Group Lead for WaSP, is not only decidedly not unprofessional, it is the very definition of professional.
Disney is an enormous company and as such may be criticized openly and freely for a site they make publicaly available. There is no moral conflict here, no legal one, and I shan’t apologize to anyone over this for no mistake has been made.
Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:22 am
[…] the issue, but he has provided a forum for anyone else who wants to chime in. Molly posted an open letter to Disney which I think sums the whole thing up quite well: Sh […]
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:25 am
You have my 100% support Molly, it is the honest and educated opinions of professionals like yourself that has moved web design towards becoming a more efficient and sustainable industry, and I feel the high profile blunder that Disney has just commited would harm not only their own business but also the industry if silence ensued.
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:28 am
For shame, Disney. For shame. Good post, maybe, just maybe it will help disney. Even if it doesn’t, it encourages us not to repeat Disney’s mistakes.
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:35 am
here’s one possible reason for the change, tucked away at the top of the html…
…nuff said!
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:38 am
…oops, it stripped the tags, should be…
<meta content=”Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 7.1″ name=”GENERATOR”>
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:39 am
You preach it sistah!
I think that maybe someone restored a really, really, really old backup. THAT’s what must’ve happened! Right? Right?
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:39 am
Molly,
Mr. Livingston should not have presumed that you did not try to answer this concern in private. You very clearly state in the beginning of your post that had tried the feedback mechanism on their site and it did not work.
Keep up the great work.
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:42 am
First let me say I totally agree with you.
However, I wonder what the chances are that their new site was built using some kind of content management system instead of actually hand written page by page. If that’s true, then your claims about managing and maintaining the site are moot (since presumably it would be easy to manage and maintain through the CMS, and indeed could be the REASON they changed the site).
Of course this doesn’t excuse the bad move, but perhaps it’s not the Disney web designer’s fault, but the CMS! I’ve seen too many CMS’s out there that produce garbage and perhaps that is just as important of a battle to fight.
But maybe not!
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:43 am
Well written Molly! I shudder when hearing of contact forms producing «Access database errors». And that’s just a small part of the bad shape their site is in…
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:47 am
[…] ankaappaus kertonee enemmän kuin tuhat sanaa… Molly laati avoimen kirjeen asiasta: An Open Letter to Disney Store UK.
Jät […]
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:50 am
Eric,
As Adam points out, it’s developed using .NET and the developers apparently aren’t standards aware enough to use that admittedly difficult but not impossible tool when it comes to standards.
And no CMS should interfere with the template markup if it too is designed properly.
A significant part of the standards-aware designer and developer job is to evaluate tools and master them, not have the tool master the skills that person brings to the table.
This is a profession, now. It ain’t the days of “Hey my 8 year old nephew can build my site with FrontPage and not charge me a dime” days.
Of course, nowadays most 8 year olds know more about how to create a standards-based site than apparently many so-called professionals do.
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:56 am
Named and shamed…the people responsible for this mess:
http://www.akikodesign.com/
November 3rd, 2005 at 11:05 am
[…] Not to go down without a fight, WaSP’s Group Lead Molly lambastes Disney in: “An Open Letter to Disney Store UK” for their colossal misstep. The reaso […]
November 3rd, 2005 at 11:09 am
Here, here!!
I am baffled by the change. Surely, the site was using a CMS when it was standards based? Perhaps not, but there are CMSs available that are standars based. If there was an awareness of and a desire to reach standards based design, why, oh why revert back to this ‘olde worlde’ methode?
Shame on the culprits!
Keep up the good work Molly.
November 3rd, 2005 at 11:13 am
My jaw dropped at the idiocracy of these Disney developers! Aside from the visual downgrade, how are these employees so ill-informed that they’d undo all of the prior benefits?! It’s a shock, and a blow to whomever their management team is.
I recently went through a similar issue, though with a small company - it was a shock to me they didn’t think twice until it was too late, after all that was taught.
November 3rd, 2005 at 11:20 am
Dr Livingston, I have to say that you have a somewhat naive understanding of the business world. There is a place for private discussions once a company has recognised the problem. However, Molly and WASP exist to bring pressure on large organisations in order to encourage them into taking their social responsibilities seriously. The sad fact of the matter is that were Molly to have succeeded in contact them privately (which she did try and do), the chances are her challenge would have been ignored. By bringing it to people’s attention publicly, she will encourage others to express their disapproval (such as my own, and many others posts on the subject) and so create a grounds swell significantly large to generate change. This happened recently in a similar situation involving the Odeon cinema here in the UK.
November 3rd, 2005 at 11:25 am
I will admit I quite liked the old design. It’s one thing to downgrade from standards while moving to a better design, but downgrading and moving to a worse design is a whole different matter. What were Disney management thinking when they said yes to the new design. Sure, they probably knew nothing of the coding, but the design alone?
November 3rd, 2005 at 11:31 am
I don’t comment frequently here, but well said Molly. I pity them for having to pay those designers…
November 3rd, 2005 at 12:01 pm
I am going to save each and every one of your points above for a confrontation I know is coming where I work. I have serious concerns about the way we’re being forced to conform to a “branded” template design for our state agencies. The thing is a mess and your issues above could easily be describing this monstrosity.
Check the source code on this page!
I’m pretty much fighting a lone battle here, but I’m pushing for standards based, semantic coding as much as I possibly can, and this kind of critical analysis gives me much needed ammunition to use in my arguments.
Thanks.
November 3rd, 2005 at 12:04 pm
Apologies for the link above.
Here’s the URL:
http://www.oregon.gov/DCBS/
November 3rd, 2005 at 12:04 pm
It’s a shame there aren’t more industry or government backed awards/accreditations that may give companies another reason to make (and keep) their site accessible.
I know big comanies like Disney should want to make sites accessible, but we all know either it’s due to a lack of knowledge (so praise to Molly and WaSP for spreading the word) or a lack of belief it’s important.
November 3rd, 2005 at 12:26 pm
Unbelievable, thanks for bringing this to prominence via WaSP. I too tried the feedback and the email routes so I look forward to seeing an official response soon. It doesn’t matter the tool, it’s the Disney project manager (one can only assume it wasn’t the one Andy worked with in their “defence”), the requirements spec and the designer who doesn’t know how to design a site with standards and build it into the CMS.
Modifying Jeremy Keith’s catchphrase from @media: “It’s not .net and CMS that kills websites, it’s people that kill websites.”
November 3rd, 2005 at 12:27 pm
How on earth can there be a requirement for a private debate about a public site..?
Once a website is launched to the general public, it becomes part of the public domain, and thus open for people to comment on.
Molly has made these comments public in a hope to bring the problems the new disney site has to a wide range of people, I believe in a hope that this will influence Disney to think about it, rather then just ignoring the Feedback form.
I do hope enough people complain, and I for one will not be using the Disney site.
This is not the first time they have used an overally imaged based site, the main Disney site is just as bad.
The only language big companies such as Disney understand are in $ & £, so the best way to influence them, is not to spend your money there (obviously not a choice for people with a disability).
Here’s hoping other big companies pay attention, you don’t take the time to provide your website to a wide range of users, then others will ensure you know about it.
Of course, the design company needs a slap…at what point did they decide not to mention how many problems this site would cause.?
November 3rd, 2005 at 12:35 pm
nice to see they have still not bothered to fix the problem with the feedback form, and the incorrect Access database path…what a bunch of muppets.
November 3rd, 2005 at 12:37 pm
Well said and absolutely right. Go on
.
November 3rd, 2005 at 12:39 pm
I found the mail rather embarrasing for a WASP group leader. Not only is it on the edge of being a true flamebait, you are throwing with assumptions about cost of ownership, without even knowing how the entire project is managed on the backend side.
If you want to accomplish something, change the tone of your message dramatically.
November 3rd, 2005 at 12:47 pm
Its interesting that the image containing contact telephone number (of “Call 0870 759 1701″ - leading to a disney store answering machine) actually has an alternative text with a phone number of “0870 759 1701″ which says the service no longer exists.
That’s discrimination. And considering the people who will receive the incorrect phone number will be screen reader users, as a result of a disability, this action alone is sufficient to warrant a DDA-based claim against the Disney Store.
November 3rd, 2005 at 12:48 pm
Bah. copy n paste bodge job! The alternative text says the number is 0870 759 1710 - different to the number inside the image
November 3rd, 2005 at 12:57 pm
Assumptions of cost of ownership? It’s well documented that the cost is less when a site is built to web standards (go and google ROI web standards).
November 3rd, 2005 at 12:58 pm
Isofarro: Oh.My.God. Talk about taking the issue to a new level. I hope someone sues, I really do.
M. Scohpman,
We’re called WaSPs for a reason. There’s a time to BUZZ and a time to sting. Disney’s shameful behavior is an obvious example of the latter. And even more so that all avenues for civil discussion have failed to work.
Like I said, I hope someone sues. If Disney is offended by my tone, I’m sure they’ll be more enlightened after they have to settle a damaging lawsuit and deal with the ensuing press that would generate.
November 3rd, 2005 at 1:05 pm
I’ve already voiced my opinion on Andy’s site, but just wanted to chime in here to say that this is a classic example of big business executives who “don’t get it” making decisions they know nothing about.
November 3rd, 2005 at 1:29 pm
Molly, I agree with all of your points save one: the idea that embedded JS and CSS is worse than the linked kinds. It’s true that if someone were doing no back-ending and attempting to embed the same CSS and JS in every page, making a single change to it would require touching every page; in that case, sure, turning that into external files would definitely be the best route. For the case of maintainability in a non-backended site (plain HTML, no database connectivity, no server-side includes), it’s ideal for keeping sources centralized.
Two problems arise from this way of maintaining a site: each external file results in another connection a client has to make to the server, regardless of if the total file size stays the same. On high speed internet and a powerful computer, this is no problem. On slower connections and a more powerful computer, this can be noticeable. The other problem arises when, for some reason or another, one of the external files fails to load. The connection might be interrupted by the client’s network going down, or a server hiccup, or any reason at all. This makes for difficult debugging by scrambling to see if it’s the HTML, CSS, or one of the many JSs that failed to load (and why — did I just call for a JS file that didn’t exist, call it by its wrong name…server just doesn’t serve up JS files??) or worse, trying to see why IE was the only browser to break and figuring out just what exactly it meant by “line 103″. But okay, I grant centralized CSS and JS is better on a non-backended site.
However, in a server environment with database connectivity (like the Disney Store Online), or server-side includes at the very least, SCRIPT SRC or LINK HREF is no longer the only way to have centralized files. All of those can be in separate central files and then installed using the server’s (not the browser’s) method of including, and then there’s only one file the user has to download (aside from graphics). It’s very likely that you’re looking at the output of SSIs, not the embedded features you were lambasting Disney for, and in my development using back-end technologies, this is my personal preference, to keep the user from having to download separate files. In the past, SSIs were bad for the inability for the server to cache the output, but recently different versions of high-capacity backends have corrected this.
Aside from this, Molly, I really do concur with everything you said — particularly in the realm of accessibility. I hope someone does do something about this travesty, though I would just love to see Disney go down hard for their entire business model.
November 3rd, 2005 at 1:36 pm
Jenn: very good points. The http requests are also an optimization issue and that’s a point that does bear weight in this discussion, especially because of the volume of traffic on such a site.
However, the store had a backend database in place before, and there was none of this crap going on. Have you looked at the JavaScript they’re using? If the need to have the scripts embedded in every document is there, at least write optimized code!
Again, it just proves out the case that education and awareness on the part of Web developers is no longer a luxury. It’s a necessity, because the educated developer will at least know how to make best decisions in a given situation.
November 3rd, 2005 at 1:38 pm
just thought it may be of interest
the old site was build using http://www.malarkey.co.uk/Karova_Store.aspx
it seems like a very nice system and uses css standards based markup
also when I sent for a quote it seemed reasonable for the price and features
November 3rd, 2005 at 1:41 pm
I posted a rant on Andy’s blog too. But now this is beyond and ranting raving. I suggest sending a formal WASP letter to them. A quick search for disneystore.co.uk on WHOIS, gives this address:
WALT DISNEY COMPANY LIMITED(THE)
3 QUEEN CAROLINE STREET
HAMMERSMITH
LONDON
W6 9PE
GB
Although they list this address on the site:
The Disney Store
PO Box 150
Sandbach
Cheshire
CW11 3WB
This is why we need groups like WASP.
November 3rd, 2005 at 1:56 pm
Admittedly, I haven’t looked at their site — but if it’s .NET-based, I can imagine what kind of crap is there. For a company that pioneered the idea of web standards, Microsoft never fails to astonish me by its insistence on releasing products that continually violate them. You can try to force .NET output to conform to standards, but it’s twice as much work and therefore twice as much money (or so they think; they don’t know how fast a good front-ender will work). So that’s probably why Disney moved to their current vendor: to save precious cash. (grumble grumble sweatshopsinHaitidontgetmestarted)
If they’re sued under the accessibility law, I hope that teaches them for trying to pinch pennies.
November 3rd, 2005 at 2:28 pm
Well said Carl G. You can’t fight against the giants like you can the little guys - the giants won’t pay any attention to your sticks and stones. Bring out the big guns. I think Molly’s done the right thing for the web community and all end users (assuming Disney listens and acts). Good onya!
November 3rd, 2005 at 2:35 pm
jennHi, using .net does not mean no web standards, and it certainly doesn’t mean doubling the cost in doing so. The previous Disney design used Karova as its e-commerce engine, and that’s a .net e-commerce application that is web standards compliant. Disney didn’t need to pay extra for the standards compliancy work - it was already part of the Karova application when they initially bought it and installed it.
Even with the bad reputation Microsoft products have in terms of standards compliance (and that looks to be improving), a developer shouldn’t blame the tools if the choice was his.
November 3rd, 2005 at 2:39 pm
Quality Molly, it’s such as shame that they’ve gone and ruined something like that. A flagship in the CSS/future web development world. Something for young developers to aspire to and know what can be achieved.
Usability must be high priority on web shops and they’ve just dented that.
I’d love to see the markup difference on just the homepage, and then calculate some bandwidth/space figures.
November 3rd, 2005 at 2:41 pm
jennHi/Molly: just to address the embedding of CSS/JS. The overhead of an extra couple requests may be noticable on the first site request but subsequent page requests should be able to forego re-requesting those CSS/JS files due to caching. This means each call after the first would actually be faster for slower connections then having that code embedded on each page. It would also, of course, lower bandwidth costs.
November 3rd, 2005 at 2:46 pm
[…] About
Contact
Content
Dear Disney
Molly Holzschlag writes an open letter to Disney Store UK about their recent redesign.molly.com […]
November 3rd, 2005 at 2:49 pm
Hey, I thought I was the blogger who trademarked starting a blog post with “An Open Letter…”; although my and Vlad’s letter was directed to WaSP.
Anyway, good to get this out in the open with arguments why it was a bad move by Disney.
November 3rd, 2005 at 2:49 pm
When companies like Disney settle for this kind of obvious tag soup, it makes us look as though we are simply making our jobs look more important than it is. In reality you did a great thing, Molly, and I applaud you for your courage.
I went to the “designers” web site and posted a comment to them asking why they would do such a thing. I doubt I will get a response, but it never hurts to ask. Their web site is also an example of “visual fluff,” as I like to call it. All beauty, no brains…
There is also a ton of proprietary Macromedia Fireworks JavaScript in there which tells me they do not have the skills to do things right (i.e. right their own code.) WYSIWYG Cowboys, Yeeeehaaaw!!! 
Billee
November 3rd, 2005 at 3:28 pm
Jonathan Snook, thanks — that is a very good point. It does not help the IE JS-bug reporting problem but that can be remedied by embedding the JS until the last moments before launch.
Isofarro, is it possible to have a standards-based .NET site using nothing but FrontPage and Visual Studio, and knowing nothing about webstandards? I’m asking because I don’t use either tool, and therefore am not up to date on the kinds of code they output.
Billee: “…it makes us look as though we are simply making our jobs look more important than it is.” Sigh — I had that thought while reading Molly’s letter. Is it that I just want to keep myself employed? It does make finding a job harder unless the employer understands the reasons, particularly the reasons Molly outlined, for moving in that directions. Those employers and clients unfortunately are rare. So thank you, Billee, for reminding me that Molly’s also here to help me and developers like me.
And thank you, Molly.
November 3rd, 2005 at 6:30 pm
As a correction to an earlier post, it seems Akiko are probably not responsible for this new site…it seems they helped out on the old one, so apologies all round.
November 3rd, 2005 at 7:04 pm
gotta love google’s result for Disney Store UK
http://www.google.com/search?&q=Disney+Store+UK
… Login, Spacer Image, Feedback, Spacer Image, Store Locator, Spacer Image, Basket, Spacer Image, What’s New … Disney.Disney Pixar. All Rights Reserved. …
November 3rd, 2005 at 7:05 pm
I’m a retard, you already linked to that.
November 3rd, 2005 at 7:14 pm
Please note that the Walt Disney Company no longer owns the Disney Store. The changeover for the web-site was supposed to take place in 2005, which could be what is happening here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Store
November 3rd, 2005 at 7:26 pm
The old site was really impressive since standards were obviously taken so seriously in the site’s implementation.
.net doesn’t render bad markup. That can only happen when developers use a tool that creates bad code or the developer does the bad job themselves. HTML rendered incorrectly by a .net application happens when the developer allows the framework or the IDE to determine the output. Too many .net devs rely on Visual Studio to do all the work for them (page layout/markup, canned javascripts and embeded css). That is prolly the biggest culprit to the release of code that is not rendered compliant.
It’s easy to create standards compliant sites in .net, just stay away from the Microsoft methodology of use.
Great work Molly.
November 3rd, 2005 at 7:38 pm
John: That’s *very* interesting. According to the Wikipedia article, the European stores were still on the market. And bottom line, it’s Disney’s brand. And they have always, always been hyper-protective about their brand.
So long as it contains the word Disney in it, it’s ultimately going to be Disney’s responsibility to protect its trademark. That’s how US law works. Disney owns their trademark and retains the licensing so also bears the burden of seeing that the brand is retained, the brand “excellence” protected, and whatever licensing guidelines exist within the licenses.
I can guarantee that if Disney finds out its brand has been so mutilated, even if the UK stores are only licensing the brand rather than being owned outright by Disney, there’s going to be some proverbial shit hitting the ol’ fan.
November 3rd, 2005 at 7:39 pm
You inspire me every time you talk about things like this. Keep on doing what your doing Molly. You f’in rule!
November 3rd, 2005 at 8:39 pm
La degeneración de un ratón
Esto es una triste noticias para los desarrolladores con apego a estándares, para más remate me vengo enterendo justo hoy, qué ironía. La historía es más o menos así. Aproximadamente en octubre de 2004, la tienda en línea para el…
November 3rd, 2005 at 9:02 pm
My guess is they’ve just implemented a big honking .NET CMS which can only produce tag soup.
The right decision would have been to send the .NET sales droids packing until their product could produce actual websites.
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:11 pm
Brandon/jennHi:
Yes it is possible to output standards compliant XHTML from a system built in Visual Studio - but it’s not something that I’ve seen many developers do. I admit, I myself am having to work on making the stuff I do in Visual Studio as standards compliant as the static pages I code in Notepad.
I think this is partly due to web design (front end) being considered a separate stream from web development (back end), and in my experience the people in these roles spend the majority of their time both performing and learning in just one stream.
Also, web development in Visual Studio and .NET overall can be tricky, because you’re working with dynamic pages. Alot of content is generated dynamically through a template page so it’s can be a bit harder to achieve consistent compliance across functionality that renders content to the page because you’re working most of the time with variables, functions and code control blocks rather than HTML elements.
I’m not making excuses for web developers - ignorance is not an excuse. It is possible to achieve web compliance in web applications developed in ASP.NET.
In fact, I think I’ll blog about this tonight, and explain just how web application development processes can be improved in order to ensure compliance is not sidelined!
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:18 pm
I’m not sure why Dr. Livingston felt Molly’s act was unprofessional. It’s clear that she took steps to first notify Disney and that path did not bear fruit. As such, and inasmuch as her role involves public discourse on standards, her actions were pretty reasonable and well above and beyond the call of duty. Look how much useful data she offered to the Disney team, they should be thanking her for the consultation.
November 4th, 2005 at 12:21 am
I am wondering if it was ignorance, laziness or just care-factor zero.
It sends a very bad message when a standards-based website goes backwards.
How do you get people to learn about standards when an out-of-the-box solution is “good enough”? Good enough for Disney!
I won’t rant here, (I have commented on my site) but it pains me to see the good work of people like Molly eroded.
November 4th, 2005 at 12:21 am
Interesting news, John… kinda changes the whole perspective on things for me a bit.
Not that I have any basis for guessing, but my imagination says the new company takes over the site, then hands it over to the in-house web team. Said web team proceeds to “redesign” the site to fit in better with their current model of online commerce, which apparently is based on sucking. I mean, a tried and true .NET application.
It’s pretty sad, really, but at least it isn’t what I think everyone has been thinking, which is that Disney said, “this fantastic website just isn’t working, let’s try something different without all that intrusive accessibility nonsense and that whole good design bit.”
November 4th, 2005 at 1:08 am
Wow, well done Molly!
November 4th, 2005 at 1:26 am
Is it possible that Disney just lucked out when they commissioned Stuff & Nonsense to produce the previous site? Or were web standards and accessibility written into the design brief?
Looking at the new site I’d say there’s every possibility it was the former, and that the positive publicity the company received at the time, and through Andy’s @media presentation, was just happy coincidence. Although *we* all know they should be two of the first considerations it’s likely that all Disney were interested in was brand.
November 4th, 2005 at 1:36 am
More than anything, I’d like to know whay they ended up with this design/build. Was it
a) A deliberate move on Disney’s part because of problems that arose from non standards-compliant browsers making the page look ugly for that ultra-small audience percentage
or was it
b) A simple case of having some money to spend on a facelift and the people in charge not getting web standards, not realising that what they had was excellent and therefore just going to someone new to get a fresh perspective.
I suspect it’s more likely to be the latter - the decision-makers in the IT area are not generally web-standards savvy. Heck, I am in a room of 20 designer/developer types and I can count the number of people who ‘get’ standards thoroughly on one hand, and none of them are decision makers; they are all ‘grunts’, the people who do, not the people who pay for it.
November 4th, 2005 at 1:45 am
Other sites by the design agency involbed:
http://www.recyclezone.org.uk/ - Nice, browser sniffing!
)
http://www.l4kmarine.com/ - Flash navigation on the header when HTML would have been just fine for the job (guys, I even have a tool that can help you with this which you could then charge your clients for all the work you did
http://www.aardmarket.com/ - Er, some empty alt attributes, please
http://telecoms.toshiba.co.uk/upload/toshibavo/launch.htm - Try accessing this without flash. The message that says you must have Flash for the site is in an image, without alts …
Jeez, they may have nice graphic design, but this agency really aren’t at the top of their game technically, it has to be said
November 4th, 2005 at 1:51 am
The mind boggles, Molly. What were they thinking? Here’s hoping you’ll reach the right people at Disney through this, and that it will all turn out well.
November 4th, 2005 at 2:30 am
I am hugely disappointed that Disney has not felt it necessary to carry the attention to detail it so obviously displays in its animations through to its website!
And that Google search results page is priceless!
Spacer gifs with alt text… ROFLMAO
The new site really is a shocking example of outdated web design and poor accessibility - shame on them and power to you for speaking up!
November 4th, 2005 at 2:33 am
Looks like Akiko are responsible for this … the feedback form is even hosted on their server. I’m gobsmacked that Disney managed to end up with a site like this.
It’s interesting seeing the problems and flaws on some of the pages. Check the source on http://disneystore-shopping.disney.co.uk/ProdDetails.aspx?catid=10&id=24036 for the biggest, most pointless hidden input in history (never heard of sessions, guys?).
It also bites from an SEO perspective. Aside from the obscene page sizes (Google will ignore everything past 100k of a page, leaving two thirds of the site unindexable), lack of meta tags, made-up tags (BodyStyle?), JavaScript “back” links and lack of quantity of quality content, there is the page title issue - every page has the same title! The page title is pretty much the single most powerful on-page element, as far as SEO goes (never mind that it’s important for accessibility too!).
And what’s with the multiple copyright notices? Like anyone’s going to rip this site off!
November 4th, 2005 at 2:50 am
It’s interesting to know they have decided to implements some enhanced web features and I suppose it did need mentioning.
However, the tact used seems rather peculiar, I understand Andy wouldn’t have been able to comment without suspicion rising; with him being a WaSP affiliate.
Though I know you could have made more effort to contact them privately; electronic commutation via TCP/IP is not the only method available; fax, telephone and finally writing, etc.
Then if they didn’t change their ways certainly protest on behalf of the WaSP, now if they are just your personal views then fair enough.
November 4th, 2005 at 5:21 am
“It’s interesting seeing the problems and flaws on some of the pages. Check the source on http://disneystore-shopping.disney.co.uk/ProdDetails.aspx?catid=10&id=24036 for the biggest, most pointless hidden input in history (never heard of sessions, guys?).”
That big, pointless input is actually a .Net thing - it’s the server’s ‘view state’ - it allows .Net to do ’sessionless sessions’, if you will.
Also, this may be the default state of an ASP.Net application (although they have made a bit of a pig’s ear even at that level), it is, as various others have said, not particularly taxing for someone with any understanding of .Net and web standards to build a fully functioning, cruft-free CMS that leverages .Net’s advantages for ‘big’ applications.
@Molly: Kudos on your response. FYI, I’m hoping to put together an appraisal of Microsoft’s Atlas (Ajax for ASP.Net 2.0) as requested of me by Messrs. Budd and Keith. See you at SXSW!
November 4th, 2005 at 6:02 am
Dr Livingston,
Is that your real name…?
November 4th, 2005 at 7:55 am
I presume!
November 4th, 2005 at 8:15 am
@molly - I’m curious, while the company is responsible to a certain degree, to what degree are the actual solution providers at fault? You have addressed the stakeholders, who likely haven’t a clue about the issues you addressed. Even if they do shake their heads and say they understand, they really don’t. Why not address the employees who provided the solutions. I think these people (by name in a public forum) need to be called out for their deprecated implementation of client-side code. I believe we have to start with the people who have the knowledge to know better. Without them, the stakeholders (vp’s & managers) will continue to make stupid decisions and the workers providing deprecated solutions will continue to get paid for it.
November 4th, 2005 at 8:23 am
[…] ut the rest of the world seems to have responded more strongly. Molly Holzschlag wrote an open letter to Disney; which is really less dramatic than it sounds: the .NET/ […]
November 4th, 2005 at 8:57 am
A Mickey Mouse Site
Where I pull my hair out over table-based design
November 4th, 2005 at 10:01 am
Well, after all thats been said and done, I doubt it very much that any exec at Disney will actually pay any attention.
And I couldn’t blame them either. If you want someone attention in todays business then the one thing that you don’t do is to do it on an open and public forum.
Also, when I said about contact via a private means I wasn’t referring to the feedback form. I was talking about finding out who to contact at their head office.
You want to make changes then fine, but do it properly - do it in a professional manner. You need to talk to the people who can make those changes.
A feedback form isn’t any excuse for your behaviour. I stand corrected btw.
November 4th, 2005 at 10:58 am
Dr Livingston: I suspect that executives at Disney will pay attention to a lose of site traffic and sales.
A web site is by definition published in an open and public forum. A non-functioning feedback form and lack of proper contact information is the fault of the developer and site owner.
All of us who are executives and developers who support web standards support Molly as our voice in this open and public forum.
Thank you again Molly for your voice and your passion for standards.
November 4th, 2005 at 11:10 am
From our good Doctor Livingstone: “If you want someone attention in todays business then the one thing that you don’t do is to do it on an open and public forum”
Really? You DON’T do it somewhere it has the chance to be noticed and talked about and debated? You should contact them privately and directly and always doff your cap, because yanno, they’re a Corporation, and ‘We Should Respect Them’?
Wrong-diddly-wrong-wrong. You couldn’t actually be much wronger, in fact. The whole point of this is TO BE NOTICED. To make a huge, sprawling organization like Disney sit up and maybe take notice; maybe do something about their site - which is, after all, what we’re harping on about here.
What do you think your method (of privately writing a letter) would have accomplished? I’ll give you a hint: It starts with “N” and ends with “othing”. It would have been buried, and maybe - just maybe - you’d have received a nice formulaic thank you letter in reply. Wow, that would be lovely, right!?
Molly’s letter is Out There. It’s garnering attention. That’s more than I can say for your proposed method of communication.
November 4th, 2005 at 11:14 am
Maybe they had systems problem and had to move in the old release ?
November 4th, 2005 at 9:42 pm
Ha ha ha is funny. You have lots of comments today…
Yes its a boggling question as to what they were thinking. And I’d like to know? What were the difficulties with Andy’s design that made them go straight back to tables. This could be important feedback.
Pursue them vigourously for that answer.
November 4th, 2005 at 9:56 pm
[…] 3:58 pm “” Molly E. Holzschlag has written an open letter to the Disney Store United Kingdom which is interesting […]
November 5th, 2005 at 2:18 pm
Molly, you rule.
November 5th, 2005 at 4:07 pm
I think some of us are giving Disney rather too much of a harsh time. Certainly they’re guilty of poor judgement, but I can’t see that they can be expected to be particularly standards and technology savvy. It’s the job of developers to deliver those things. I think Disney store is perhaps every bit as much a victim of this new design.
I’m sure some comparison with cowboy builders can be made.
November 5th, 2005 at 9:09 pm
[…] ig ol’ Mouse, and for developers like me, it isn’t pretty. Molly at WaSP had a few things to say about it, as did Andy Clarke, the former (standards-based) […]
November 6th, 2005 at 7:44 am
One step forward, several steps back
Some time ago, Disney Store UK became one of the UK’s biggest online stores to have a standards-compliant, accessible re-design.
November 6th, 2005 at 9:57 am
Bravo Molly. I sincerely like it when the proverbial shit his the ole fan. Although I applaud your efforts, I do wonder (and doubt) if Disney will respond to this. Make sure you tell us if they do
These comments have been great, and some other (somewhat tangential) points have been raised.
I’ve been getting a few buddy designers into standards and am proud to say I send them all to your blog.
November 6th, 2005 at 11:53 am
Nice one Molly!More like this please. Thanks!
November 6th, 2005 at 11:56 am
Bravo Molly!
It’s funny!
=)
November 7th, 2005 at 7:37 am
Disney store are reacting - I’ve noticed a number of tiny changes - most importantly correcting the phone number on the alternative text. That surely is an indication that a message is getting through.
As to who is responsible, since the site in question is targeted at the UK market, the DDA applies. This indicates that the onus is on the website commissioner to ensure their site is accessible. So Disney Store are right in the firing line, regardless of whether they have the technical knowledge, and regardless of whether they decided to delegate off all responsibility.
Its not clear whether this particular degradation is the work of an external agency or an inhouse “ecommerce specialists”.
November 7th, 2005 at 8:20 am
What happens now? Disney Store have made some small changes - correcting the phone number on the alternative text, removing the space image alternative text.
Its unrealistic / impractical to expect them to rebuild their current site using web standards - that’s basically the same as starting all over again.
What I’d like to see is a copy of Zeldman’s “Designing with Web standards”, and Joe Clark’s “Building Accessible Websites” put into the hands of every web designer and developer on the project that produced that site. With the undertaking that they will read and learn, and won’t make this mistake again. If the website owners of DisneyStore are reading - please do this - it is in your best interests too, especially if the people concerned are your inhouse web team.
November 7th, 2005 at 9:10 am
forgive me for not having enough time to be able the read the entire blog comments.
in regards to their using visual studio, i can say from experience that it is very hard to get microsoft’s software to generate nice, clean code that you can use css for. i’ve been using it at my work place for months (it’s required), and with the release this week of the final version of asp.net 2.0, i would imagine many more companies will be using it soon.
that said, i think those that say how hard it will be to manage their site have no idea how easy it is it update content with the software microsoft develops. we create pages that use very little actual html but use many more controls that insert the data we wish to disply, and the software inserts the html on its own. while this is very useful to busy companies, it makes it hard for me to support standards in my work or to code well with css.
a quick description of WHY you see a lot of inline code: microsoft has a “skin” file in asp.net 2.0 that inserts inline css in whatever tags have been given specific IDs; you can even have css applied to general things such as “all textboxes”. you have, count it, ONE file to update these inline styles with if you do it correctly, which means updating here, again, is easy for them. do not critisize too harshly what you do not know about.
of course, *that* being said, i think it’s a shame that microsoft went so far in trying to get css support into their product to so little advantage. i use this skin file i mentioned only to tell the software to reference my actual css file. by doing this, i have most of the advantage of css back. perhaps you can mention the advantage of this instead of their (i assume they have a) skin file.
please, no flaming me here. i’m 100% with you about standards and css, and i’m merely pointing out that the software they use already makes updating pretty easy for them. unfortunately, the user is the one who suffers.
November 7th, 2005 at 9:42 am
After reading all these comments, I think the post by JohnnyLab is very telling. I can’t help feeling that this is a major management cock up somewhere in the UK franchise that outsourced this development to another company. Having had such a great site, I honestly can’t imagine the Disney chief execs sitting round a table and saying “Yes, lets trash our existing accessible site and make a site that is completely inaccessible, using outdated and invalid markup”. I can see someone loose their job here (which is not something I would wish on anyone btw)!
Regarding the .Net debate surely graphic/web designers do not use .net to create their designs. .Net is for developers not designers. In a well organised team, the designers should be generating the HTML and telling the developers what mark-up output they need from the system. One way of enforcing this is by generating XML not HTML using .Net and then transforming this into HTML. This ensures .Net doesn’t produce shoddy mark up. It also may make it much either to support other platforms such as WAP, Web Services and technologies yet to be invented.
November 7th, 2005 at 9:54 am
[…] Reine Zeitverschwendung war dagegen das jüngste Redesign des Disney Store UK. Neben dem offenen Brief von Molly Holzschlag gab es auch sonst reichlich Reaktionen auf […]
November 7th, 2005 at 3:50 pm
Way to go Molly! Disney should sit up and take notice of that mockery they call a website.
November 7th, 2005 at 4:08 pm
Molly E. Holzschlag, the Group Lead for Web Standards Project (WaSP), has written a public letter to t […]
November 7th, 2005 at 10:55 pm
Regarding the old standards-based/accessible Disney store deployed in 2004: It “has been a collaborative effort between Stuff and Nonsense, Karova, brand agency Akiko and Internet Logistics who provide fulfilment services.”
http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/archives/disney_store_and_web-standards.html
So, Akiko was also involved with the creation of the older site. From reading all the above comments, it looks like the store was switched to run under a different CMS/backend, which lead to the issues presently being discussed.
November 7th, 2005 at 10:57 pm
The stuffandnonsense.co.uk URL above got mangled during posting. Here’s the TinyURL for it:
http://tinyurl.com/7kwrj
November 8th, 2005 at 3:38 pm
Not only did the new design by Akiko suck, but their own web site blatantly copies The Designer’s Republic site.
http://www.akikodesign.com
http://www.thedesignersrepublic.com/
One of the most obvious to is the “Services” page on Akiko’s site.
November 8th, 2005 at 8:03 pm
Damn, Molly! You are my hero.
November 8th, 2005 at 10:10 pm
— President Al Gore
http://www.AlGoreLabs.com
November 9th, 2005 at 3:11 pm
Dear me..there’s nothing worse than seeing Internet programming geeks in a rage! Seriously, do you think anyone at Disney will care one jot about ‘open letters’ - no offence intended but I think you’re over-estimating your own importance. From the consumer’s point of view, the new site looks nice, it works fine when you order something and that’s all that matters to Disney.
November 10th, 2005 at 6:45 am
Jack: except of course blind consumers looking for a present for their children or those with reading diffculties who can’t increase the text size. Does disney not provide wheelchair access to their stores?
But never mind all this, disney I guess makes enough profit by excluding these consumers. Is this what their shareholders think? Will the shareholders care about the fact their main site in the UK is illegal according to the DDA?
Probably, but if not, I’m sure they care about the publicity generated from Molly’s open letter. Type “disney uk” into Google and her open letter ranks 2nd!
November 11th, 2005 at 5:39 am
I love you, Molly!
November 11th, 2005 at 1:23 pm
I was actually referred to this by blog by a friend of mine, and the problem with it is that all of us are missing one key piece of information, one which we will never have access to:
Does the site provide an increase in sales and more importantly profits?
Yes, the code is bulky, inefficient, and ASP.Net-ish. No, it’s not how the vast majority would have done it. Yes, it makes what many of us would consider to be excessive use of Javascripts.
But the problem is that Disney isn’t targeting us as customers. They’re targeting the masses, the regular Joe, the “common folk”, whatever you want to call them. And most people that I talk to that I would classify in that category don’t give a damn about semantic markup and accessibility and other such issues. They give a damn about things like “can I find what I want? Is it easy to buy? Can I check out?”
Personally, I don’t have a problem with that process as far as I chose to take it. I found what I wanted, I ordered it, I checked out…well, sort of (I never went and bought the thing).
I never saw the old site, but code issues aside, I don’t really have a problem operating the new one, and I do have a vision disorder.
And as long as people are doing that, and Disney’s sales and profits are going up, then it doesn’t matter what you, I, or anyone else thinks about their code or accessibility initiatives or any other aspect of their site, as long as the government of the UK has determined whether or not it’s legal.
So, the question is this: rather than posting an open letter on your blog to Disney, why not write the British government themselves and let them make the call? Then let’s see what happens.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, by the way. I’m just saying that there are other relevant non-code factors which have been ignored and/or dismissed.
November 11th, 2005 at 5:00 pm
I understand everything you are all saying. I also think it is valid and appropriate. I however have the sales figures and sales are up 40% - 50% since the relaunch.
November 12th, 2005 at 1:02 am
How do you know sales, have you seen them?
November 12th, 2005 at 4:07 am
Well no not exactly. I read on businessweek.com a few days ago that profits for disney store had gone up since the company were bought out. Maybe the buy out is the reason for the redesign of the online shop???
November 13th, 2005 at 3:27 pm
I have recently experienced another Akiko website. It consists 100% of Flash, and enormous amounts of Flash at that. When I say 100% I really mean 100%. There’s no copyright, no email, no contact details, nothing. You go to the page, and if you haven’t got Flash, that’s it. And the Flash times out for broadband users.
The site is for a cookery show, and most users are probably coming there for recipes. It took three adults most of a day to track down the recipes, because, when the Flash finally loads, you get one of those tricksy interfaces which you have to “explore”…
What century is this again?
November 13th, 2005 at 7:26 pm
I fired off an email to The Designers’ Republic to let them know about how very much *ahem* inspired Akiko were by their web site. As a long time tDR fan, it’s nothing new to see their work ripped off, but that one’s rather blatant.
On the .NET side of things, yes it’s possible to generate web standards friendly code from ASP.NET but it’s not something that’s particularly easy to achieve - at least not until some familiarity is gained with the platform. Don’t get me started about the forward focus to ASP.NET 2.0… rather than actually fix anything in the current release, they’ve taken to effectively re-write the whole thing! As always, thanks for the support, microsoft.
November 13th, 2005 at 11:20 pm
To Dr. Livingston,
Physician heal thyself.
November 14th, 2005 at 7:37 am
I wonder if people would be as laissez-faire if they’d suddenly uninstalled door-openers and added steps to all their UK stores..?
I also think that someone at Disney is at fault; I don’t expect my local store to necessarily know anything about very specific legislation and it’s implementation, but someone as big as Disney Stores UK? Hmmmm… I suspect they’d know if they were breaking trading law!
(ps; GO MOLLY!)
November 15th, 2005 at 12:56 am
[…] : does the new site make more money? It’s not until well over 100 comments that Adam brings this u […]
November 15th, 2005 at 1:16 am
[…] eople who already agree with them.” The Web Standards community is no exception. The […]
November 15th, 2005 at 7:01 am
25 nested tables?
31 font tags?
As for navigating the site with Javascript disabled…forget it!
They’ve gotta be having a laugh right?
Keep up the good work Molly. Looking forward to the CSS Workshop in London on Thursday. Maybe you can show us all how to recreate that ’special’ Disney Store style with our own sites
November 15th, 2005 at 8:00 am
I went to the Disney Store web site and checked out their feedback form. All they have is an e-mail link instead of the old form. Sounds like they are at *least* aware of their Access DB problem
November 15th, 2005 at 4:31 pm
Wow. Not a single div. Styles defined in each table cell.
That is pretty bad.
Somone needs to hire some new tech producers or train the ones they have.
Dissapointing.
November 15th, 2005 at 8:56 pm
[…] sp;
Molly E. Holzschlag, the Group Lead for Web Standards Project (WaSP), has written a public letter to the U […]
November 15th, 2005 at 8:59 pm
greetings from the student of riveride college…………. hello………..!gud pm……..!!!!!!!!!!!!!
November 16th, 2005 at 1:34 pm
Bravo Molly, your open letter is right on the point.
There are so many people developing web sites without having a clue about what standards are, many people still living in 1994.
I have seen a couple of old clients, for whom I had designed web standards compliant sites, getting a redesign (often by the boss nephew) with lots of those nasty tables and spacer gifs. It’s unbelievable.
In Disney’s case, even if they are using a CMS, there are lots of CMS with good template systems where you can use web standards. We are talking about professional guys here, right? I can’t imagine how nobody in a big company like that cares about accessibility or standards.
Regards!
November 16th, 2005 at 3:43 pm
Molly I think your approach in exposing this issue works well to get the people who are already in the web standards camp rallied and foaming at the mouth. If that was your objective, good for you. However in my opinion, it is counter-productive in effecting any real change with decision makers who are wondering what all this fuss about web standards is. I don’t think your rant is going to help convince any executives of the need for web standards (I certainly won’t be printing it out and showing it to my boss! She’d probably throw up on it.)
I’m looking, right now, for objective, professional case study type material that clearly articulates the business benefits of web standards. Also, would love to see a realistic discussion of the tradeoffs of web standards.
I think a case study showing before and after shots, with some metrics to back up your claims would be much more powerful than a well written, passionate, open-letter. I hope as a leader in this area you can provide this type of professional material in the future. If you’ve already developed it, awesome, I’ll continue to look.
November 16th, 2005 at 5:21 pm
Dave K said: “…decision makers who are wondering what all this fuss about web standards is.”
Decision makers who have heard of Web Standards? I agree with your point except this phrase!
November 17th, 2005 at 2:32 pm
Hey Good One. Disney store atleast doing somehting…………….
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Disney is good design need to imporve.
November 28th, 2005 at 5:13 am
Disney Store moved away from webstandards
Webstandards evangelist Molly Holzschlag wrote a brisk open letter to the Disney Store after they recently dumped their webstandards compliant site and introduced table-based layouts, spacer gifs, <font>-tags and lots of style attributes.
…
November 28th, 2005 at 7:10 pm
I just inherited a large site developed by a big outside web dev firm in .NET. It is a disaster. As for…
“It’s easy to create standards compliant sites in .net, just stay away from the Microsoft methodology of use.”
What’s the point then?! Might as well use Notepad and a reasonable language. The use of .NET ARE in the predefined controls, etc., which create the crap markup. But as for the .NET IDE, I can’t even cut and paste into it’s HTML view without it creating font tags out the wazoo.
“The right decision would have been to send the .NET sales droids packing until their product could produce actual websites.”
’nuff said.
December 1st, 2005 at 11:00 am
Running their site through Watchfire’s WEB XACT returns compliance right up to priority 3 accessibility standards (AAA). Have they sneakliy fixed these problems since you raised the issue? Or am I missing something really obvious here?
December 4th, 2005 at 11:41 am
I Am Me:Dr. Livingston Is not present and is not present.
December 9th, 2005 at 11:35 am
[…] s a Nature (the journal) special all about sleep. Some pretty interesting facts actually. An open letter to Disney Store UK. *Is nodding head in agreement with all said […]
December 10th, 2005 at 6:13 pm
It’s also important to note, in regards to the large amount of javascript in use on the site, that many people on the internet still do disable javascript in their browsers. For a site design to rely heavily on javascript for basic functionality is asking for trouble and a potential loss in traffic/readership when pages fail to render properly and visitors turn their attention, and their pocketbooks, elsewhere.
December 13th, 2005 at 3:30 am
I can’t seem to locate their spacer gifs in their sourcecode anymore… Maybe they have removed it?
Anyhows… I can’t understand why anyone in their right mind would use gif as the image type for the header images:
http://disneystore-shopping.disney.co.uk/img/banner_default.gif
http://disneystore-shopping.disney.co.uk/img/flash_holder_default.gif
The graphics are very pixelated and really ugly… but then again: That might be the look they’re going for…
December 16th, 2005 at 1:00 am
[…] ad habits that have hurt the progress of Web development and design. – Molly Holzschlag. An Open Letter to Disney Store UK […]
December 20th, 2005 at 3:42 pm
The folks over at “The Official Home Page of the Walt Disney Company” have done the UK Disney Store one better: Firefox users are not admitted!! http://www.disney.com/
Try it in FF and then in IE. Also, click on the links (in FF) for “Privacy Policy” and “Internet Safety” and the page is blank. Their FAQ is a blatant lie: http://psc.disney.go.com/guestservices/8765.html#8765
It states: “In general, we do not create Web pages that can only be accessed using one particular Internet browser. We strive to make our sites as accessible as possible for all of our Guests.” My ass you do.
December 22nd, 2005 at 5:06 pm
I certainly hope you find the balance between advocacy and unprofessional slander, because you haven’t found it yet.
Posting on your blog - with open comments might I add - is childish. You’ve achieved nothing other than riling up people who don’t think past the next 5 minutes, and making the cause seem amaturish.
“I hope someone sues, I really do”? I think we all know who the shame finger should be pointed at, it’s you.
January 5th, 2006 at 6:01 am
I’m not going to say anything more on what Disney has done to their UK store, but I would like to comment on some of the replies to the statement.
In my mind all Molly has done is write a review of a product, only facts have been stated and it has not been used to make any malicious statements.
I often have to deal with the politics of large companies, and strange decisions like these are made all the time, quite often down to lack of time, lack of understanding and sometimes a bit of “well I have a friend with a company that does that”.
This unfortunately is Business, next time Disney UK decided to revamp their store they will hopefully use reviews like this to help them.
January 14th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
[…] Der Disney-Shop-Relauch Im Oktober 2004 wurde der britische Disney-Store gemäß Webstandards-Idealen mit der Hilfe der Szene-Bekanntheit Andy Clarkey redesignt und galt seitdem als Vorzeigebeispiel (Disney Store case study). Schade nur, dass im November 2005 wieder ein Relaunch anstand und man diesmal wieder zu grässlichen verschachtelten Layouttabellen, überladenem Code und Spacer-Gifs zurückgekehrt ist. Dieser Rückschritt ist sicher zu bedauern und zu kritisieren. In die Geschichte ging Molly Holzschlags Open Letter to Disney Store UK ein. Er fängt nicht mit der Frage an, die sich alle stellten und niemand beantworten konnte: Warum dieser Rückschritt? Stattdessen stehen Urteile und hochemotionale Vorwürfen am Anfang: Your so-called redesign is a travesty, a tragedy, and an embarrassment. Die Argumente, die sie im Folgenden aufführt, bleiben allgemeine Vermutungen, denn niemand kennt die Situation hinter den Kulissen. Your site will become significantly more difficult to manage. Höchstwahrscheinlich, aber wie sieht es tatsächlich aus? The site may experience a drop in search rankings across all engines. Nun, wie gesagt, wo ist die Empirie, die jedem Marketing-Menschen bei Disney das Fürchten lehren kann? Mit I say shame on you … Shame on you Disney endet der Brief. Auch Jens Grochtdreis berichtete über den Disney-Store-Relauch. Er gesteht zumindest zu, keine Erklärung zu haben, aber seine Spekulation ist wie gehabt: Die Marketing-Abteilung habe keinen keinen blassen Schimmer von der Qualität unter der Oberfläche und die Verantwortlichen hätten keine Ahnung von ihrer Arbeit. Selbst wenn das stimmt – es ist nicht mein Anliegen, über Spekulationen zu streiten –, so ist es dennoch kontraproduktiv, sich als Außenstehender die pauschale Erklärung zurechtzulegen, dass man es mit Ignoranten zu tun hat. Dies zeugt nur von eigenem Unverständnis gepaart mit einem Moralismus, der auf die Angesprochenen arrogant und abweisend wirkt. Freilich sollte Disney klar davon in Kenntnis gesetzt werden, dass die Technik grob fehlerhaft ist und ihnen zum eigenen Nachteil gereicht. Die Selbstgerechtigkeit allerdings, die aus den Shame on you-Sprüchen spricht, hat auf dem Feld des Kampfes um »Webstandards« nichts verloren. Werbung für »Webstandards« sollte heißen, die Adressaten wie Kunden zu umwerben, sie für sich zu gewinnen. Die Botschaft sollte sein, dass die »Webstandards«-Aktivisten ihre Zusammenarbeit anbieten und bereit sind, mit jedem eine Diskussion darüber zu führen, wie Websites verbessert werden könnten. Diese grundlegende Haltung vermisse ich in Vorfällen wie diesem. Was ändert es die Welt, wenn sich die gesamte »Webstandards«-Szene einmütig über den Rückschritt echauffiert? Der vermeintliche »öffentliche Druck« ist verschwindend gering. Ein solcher Brief erreicht extrem selektiv eine rein virtuelle Pseudo-Öffentlichkeit (Indymedia). Molly rennt bei ihren Lesern offene Türen ein, den Adressaten des Briefes erreicht sie nicht. Eine Kommunikation mit Disney wurde nicht hergestellt (naja). Stattdessen stärkte der Rückschritt die Identität und Zusammengehörigkeit der »Webstandards«-Szene. Wird dadurch das Web besser? […]
January 14th, 2006 at 5:50 pm
[…] In Mollys offenem Brief wurde die verantwortliche Agentur ffentlich beschimpft und auch die verantwortlichen beim Disneystore als, nun ja, fast inkompetent dargestellt. Natrlich spielten da viele Gefhle mit, denn es war ja eines der Vorzeigeobjekte der Webstandardsbewegung, und pltzlich kehren sie ihr den Rcken zu, ohne eine Erklrung. Auch wenn ich verstanden habe dass man verletzt war, verstand ich nicht wie man so pauschal und unprofessionell urteilen konnte, vor allem durch wirklich bekannte Gren. […]
January 23rd, 2006 at 8:31 am
Sitting here gobsmacked and open mouthed, it doesnt even have a doctype? Hmmm!
I really cant believe that they left it up all this time. This went round a mailing list I am on a while back but I didnt get a chance to look although was reminded about it at a course last week and had to read up.
Did Disney ever comment anywhere about this?
January 25th, 2006 at 4:55 am
links@PassionVietnam.com
February 1st, 2006 at 9:55 am
“I certainly hope you find the balance between advocacy and unprofessional slander, because you haven’t found it yet.
Posting on your blog - with open comments might I add - is childish. You’ve achieved nothing other than riling up people who don’t think past the next 5 minutes, and making the cause seem amaturish.
“I hope someone sues, I really do”? I think we all know who the shame finger should be pointed at, it’s you. ”
I agree 100%. Such childish outbursts do nothing to help and merely confirm some peoples view that certain web professionals are giant egotists who throw tantrums when things aren’t done their way.
February 11th, 2006 at 6:14 am
Its all Molly Beusiness..He lost he business from disney so has taken style as tool.
why he has comment any other Big UK online retailers?..Come on Molly..Go forward..
Suggestion:
Make a list of big online retailers sitea and get their site statndards.
Regards
GUGA
March 15th, 2006 at 8:22 pm
To quote mrjay:
“I think some of us are giving Disney rather too much of a harsh time. Certainly they’re guilty of poor judgement, but I can’t see that they can be expected to be particularly standards and technology savvy. It’s the job of developers to deliver those things.”
The people “in charge” make the FINAL DECISIONS. Therefore, they need to learn about the importance of web standards, and some basics about how choosing the right or wrong technologies makes it extremely difficult for the majority of developers to produce web-standards-based sites.
Then, they must instruct the IT staff to give heavy weight to what the developers say they can and can’t do WELL with various technologies, instruct the IT staff that web standards and accessibility are TOP priorities, and inform their developer team about those priorities.
The developers can’t do anything without the decision-makers’ say-so. And if they don’t understand, they won’t listen. They don’t need to be particularly technologically savvy, just understand some basic points and learn to actually LISTEN to their developers and get their input before making technology decisions that affect their work and maybe destroy it!
March 16th, 2006 at 10:29 am
Disney’s UK online store sucks
Today, I am ashamed to be British, no wait, that’s not right. Today, I am ashamed of an American multi national treating us Brits like second-class citizens. Yeah, that sounds better. Disney has launched their new UK store and has made an embarrassing…
March 31st, 2006 at 10:16 am
[…] Karova. Nice shiny website. £495 per site. Looks very promising indeed, but difficult to see what features are available. No online demo. Was used to power the Disney store UK before they inexplicably decided to go back to a tag soup version. […]
May 15th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
Molly, don’t listen to posts like “Nathan de Vries Says:”, and you have my support.
January 8th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
[…] Games Recnetly I’ve made some fairly pointed comments about Image Comics, and I’m not going to apologize. Their new site sucks almost as bad as their last one. I wish that Molly would review it like she did the UK Disney Store (I’m sure it would put my review to shame)… they deserve it. […]
February 24th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
I was sad to see that “Lady” in the Disney Stores is now a sickly yellow colour cuddly toy, no longer the soft beige colour as before ie about 12+ years ago……Where can I complain to? Thanks
March 20th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
http://test.com
April 11th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
I’m a ASP.NET developer myself and very interested in web standards. I do care, and I agree with everything you said in your article. BUT…
I get angry at the fact that people are telling web developers to ‘go flip some burgers’ when they DO find it difficult to adjust Visual Studio to generate standards compliant code. I’m sick of being called lazy. I’m tired of being called ignorant and non-caring. With so much new technologies coming up, there is no time to really getting to know your tools. That’s just a fact. And it’s hard to convince the customer to invest a bit more money so I can make it more accessible. I’m not a sales person, I’m not a CSS guru who knows all browser quircks and how to get around them, I’m not a Visual Studio professional. But that’s the tool I must use at the moment, and I don’t hate it. I love my job, and I’m willing to learn how to build standards compliant, accessible web applications. Now just point me in the right direction.
There are tons of articles how to write accessible sites. I can do it pretty easy in Notepad. Microsoft is starting out to really go for web standards, but it would take years for them to do it with VS as clean as I can do it in Notepad. So yes, I blame the tools. Why can’t WaSP write some articles and thereby helping out developers with the tools of today? You’d make me a webstandards evangelist in my company!
May 4th, 2007 at 9:31 am
I thought about this scenario - New agency win Disney web contract by putting in ridiculous “cheap as chips” price compared to incumbent agency
Incumbent lose contract to new agency who design sites for peanuts.
Because site costs peanuts agency has to use junior monkeys who know Sweet FA (Sweet F*%K All) about anything or worse a freelancer who knows even less - they build site quick with WYSIWYG editor and bingo you have a new website. Thats as compliant as a rabid dog!
My 2 pence worth
May 10th, 2007 at 1:17 am
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June 11th, 2007 at 5:29 am
Szervusz!
Check this out!
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And some more..
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At last…
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June 13th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
This is a big member-based photo and video website.
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June 26th, 2007 at 1:03 am
[…] Nov 5th, 2005 by tashmahal Man, she is so freakin’ cool. Molly has written an open let