Site Review: 2002 Olympics

Andy King writes: "If Olympic Web sites were an event, Salt Lake wouldn't even take the bronze. Our review reveals some gnarly accessibility moguls." There's another review of the site which mentions the many accessibility problems that the Sydney Olympics had with its website. The site doesn't appear to work at all with konqueror.

Comments

Works OK in Galeon on Linux...

[jabbo]

They're not even making any money off the site AFAIK, unlike some sites that don't work (airline sites mostly) without IE5.5 and a lot of good luck.

IMHO it could be a lot worse, as well as a lot better. Usability nuts seem to forget how businesses actually work (which is to say, barely, on most days).

I run Linux full-time at home on my laptop, and use Windows full-time at work (mostly because Windows Media doesn't run natively in Linux, and Real is not representative under Linux of how it runs in Windows -- and our streaming media clients are the biggest source of support calls). Normally I just expect incompetent web design. By my standards, the SLOC website is not half bad, just wickedly slow.

YMMV...

Does anyone really give a shit anymore?

[phillymjs]

The modern Olympic games are just a friggin' waste of TV time, and just one more thing in human culture that has been taken over, lock, stock and barrel by megacorporations and their sponsorships. Yeah-- like these athletes really got that way by sucking down Big Macs. Riiiiiiight.

The last time the games really mattered was in 1936, when Jesse Owens beat out Hitler's alleged Master Race competitors. It's been all downhill since then. All that's left now is a corporate-sponsored hollow shell. I'm surprised they haven't destroyed the last bastion of tradition and redone the torch to look like a big Bic or Zippo.

Face it, the most Olympic-related fun you can have nowadays is by dusting off your old Commodore 64/Atari/Apple II/what-have-you and loading up the old Epyx "[season] Games" titles.

~Philly

Re:Does anyone really give a shit anymore?

[JordoCrouse]

The modern Olympic games are just a friggin' waste of TV time

I know - and TV time is just soooo valuable these days. I would hate to have Springer canceled just to watch a guy that has trained his entire life win a gold medal which just happens to be the higest honor his sport can bestow.

Living in Salt Lake City, I have been a large critic of the Organizing Committee. I agree with everything they say about the Mormon Olympics, and the bribery scandal, and the liquor laws, and the transportation snafus, and any other politcal goat fuck that has popped up over the last 6 years.

But also, as my brother was a competitive ski racer (and my mother was a hell of a ice skater in her day), I have a real appreaciation for the hard work and pain that many of these atheletes endure for their entire lives just to get one shot at olympic glory. Thats a huge commitment, and it is important for the games to be televised , and to give these guys the 7 and 1/2 minutes of fame that they deserve. When the games actually start, all the politics and evilness will subside and we may be able to share a little bit of triumph with our athletes.

If you don't want to watch, thats fine - the games will be televised with or without you, but you shouldn't attack the meaning that these 2 weeks have in the lives of the athletes. No matter how commercial or screwed up they are, these are still the friggin Olympic games.

The point everyone one is missing

[DrNibbler]

Is that many people don't have broadband at home yet. Heck, the recent slashdot poll had 19% of slashdotters using dialup. That number has to higher for the Jane Imacs and the Allen Oscar Littles. Now between the Flash, Video (Quicktime and Windows Media?), and Actobat files this has got to be a bandwith hungry sight. Unless they feel most people will be viewing this at home they are probably shutting people out.

Languages?

[cascino]

Usability issues aside - with the Olympics being, you know, an international event, you'd expect translations of the page in at least the common European languages plus Japanese and a few others, right?
Whoever had the foresight to exclude all languages other than English and French is a complete moron, and stands to further propogate the idea of the self-serving American (i.e.: "everybody should speak English!"). To make matters worse, the French site follows none of the English site's design conventions (perhaps a good thing!) and has the personality of a dehydrated camel - there are no images on the site's content pages, for example.
Also, not to be troll, but honestly, guys... when the top story on the front page is a lambasting of the usability of a website, it's a good thing to provide a link of some sort to the site, ya know?

Salt Lake 2002

[i_am_nitrogen]

I've been reading over some of the comments here, and I must say that I am appalled at the unjustified criticism and uneducated stereotyping being thrown around. Salt Lake City is not an inbred hick town, Mormons don't have horns, and Utahns are not polygamists (Those that are do so in violation of federal law and are the exception, not the rule. Besides, all the polygamists live in their own cities with unfinished houses to dodge taxes.), and the term "Mormon Olympics" is simply uncalled for. I am speaking as a former resident of Salt Lake City and current resident of Utah, and a Mormon all my life. Isn't this (Open Source) community supposed to be open minded and unjudging (except toward Microsoft products, of course ;p)? Shame on you all. Learn a little bit about a group of people before you go up and down criticizing it for things that aren't even true.

The fact that the website runs IIS and is incompatible with Lynx says nothing about the character of the people who live in the state. Not everyone is an incompetent MCSE (I, for example, have written several useful projects).

Surely I will get moderated down for this post.

-nitrogen