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: WaSP, web design and development
Posted by: Molly | 09:40 | Comments (180)
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.
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!
I love you, Molly!
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.
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.
How do you know sales, have you seen them?
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???
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?
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.
To Dr. Livingston,
Physician heal thyself.
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!)
[...] : does the new site make more money? It’s not until well over 100 comments that Adam brings this u [...]
[...] eople who already agree with them.” The Web Standards community is no exception. The [...]
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
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
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.
[...] sp;
Molly E. Holzschlag, the Group Lead for Web Standards Project (WaSP), has written a public letter to the U [...]
greetings from the student of riveride college…………. hello………..!gud 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!
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.
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!
Hey Good One. Disney store atleast doing somehting…………….
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Disney is good design need to imporve.
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.
…
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.
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?
I Am Me:Dr. Livingston Is not present and is not present.
[...] 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 [...]
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.
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…
[...] ad habits that have hurt the progress of Web development and design. – Molly Holzschlag. An Open Letter to Disney Store UK [...]
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’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.
[...] 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? [...]
[...] 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. [...]
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?
“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.
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
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!
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…
[...] 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. [...]
Molly, don’t listen to posts like “Nathan de Vries Says:”, and you have my support.
[...] 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. [...]
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
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!
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
[...] Nov 5th, 2005 by tashmahal Man, she is so freakin’ cool. Molly has written an open letter to Disney about their horrifically non-compliant redesign/cock-up of Disney Store UK. [...]
Where the hell is my local Disney store? you know, a real shop. I Live in South London. Tell Me. Now damnit. I need to know. Anyway. Have a nice day xxxxxxxxxxx
Привет, я из Хорватии. Где мое пиво?
shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttttt
Personally I hope they make it more inaccessible because of twits such as yourself.
Tired of you whining babies. Get lost.