<story><title>Manchester City Council</title><url>http://www.manchester.gov.uk/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DigitalSea</author><text>I applaud the change and thinking outside of the box, but the Manchester City Council website looks like a $45 Wordpress theme off of Themeforest. The slider appears to offer no value to the site other than taking up a massive amount of room without really justifying its existence. I&apos;m not a designer, I&apos;m a developer and I am struggling to understand the reasoning behind that slider.&lt;p&gt;While I agree that the trendy look of the site is better than most Government sites, it tries too hard to the point the change and potential this site could have had is gone. The reason Government websites are usually ugly is not because Government&apos;s are afraid of change or can&apos;t justify the cash it&apos;s because there are content accessibility guidelines to adhere too. And when you&apos;ve got to make your content accessible to people with disabilities well your options can be somewhat limited (especially colour use).&lt;p&gt;This is the perfect example of everything wrong with modern web design. Instead of thinking, &quot;What can we NOT add to this site design&quot; designers seem to be thinking, &quot;How many full screen images, rounded corners, parallax effects, CSS animations, Javascript effects and large amounts of custom fonts can we cram into this site?&quot;&lt;p&gt;I can foresee a lot of issues for people with eyesight problems on this site, aren&apos;t Governments supposed to adhere to WCAG rules and a lot more stricter than non-Government websites do? The images don&apos;t even have alt tags on them, Web Developer common sense rule #1 — Always put alt tags on images, especially when they&apos;re being used as icons in content sections, wow.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hglaser</author><text>What a predictable top comment for a Hacker News thread. :(&lt;p&gt;A government website showcases a design that is &lt;i&gt;leaps and bounds&lt;/i&gt; ahead of &lt;i&gt;any other government site we can think of&lt;/i&gt;, and HN&apos;s top comment casually dismisses it.&lt;p&gt;To rewrite something you said: &quot;This is the perfect example of everything wrong with [HN comments].&quot;&lt;p&gt;I, for one, am floored that someone in city government was able to rise above the bureaucracy and ship something truly useful and delightful for citizens. I would love nothing more than to meet the people involved and buy them a pint. Well done, guys.</text></comment>
<story><title>Manchester City Council</title><url>http://www.manchester.gov.uk/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DigitalSea</author><text>I applaud the change and thinking outside of the box, but the Manchester City Council website looks like a $45 Wordpress theme off of Themeforest. The slider appears to offer no value to the site other than taking up a massive amount of room without really justifying its existence. I&apos;m not a designer, I&apos;m a developer and I am struggling to understand the reasoning behind that slider.&lt;p&gt;While I agree that the trendy look of the site is better than most Government sites, it tries too hard to the point the change and potential this site could have had is gone. The reason Government websites are usually ugly is not because Government&apos;s are afraid of change or can&apos;t justify the cash it&apos;s because there are content accessibility guidelines to adhere too. And when you&apos;ve got to make your content accessible to people with disabilities well your options can be somewhat limited (especially colour use).&lt;p&gt;This is the perfect example of everything wrong with modern web design. Instead of thinking, &quot;What can we NOT add to this site design&quot; designers seem to be thinking, &quot;How many full screen images, rounded corners, parallax effects, CSS animations, Javascript effects and large amounts of custom fonts can we cram into this site?&quot;&lt;p&gt;I can foresee a lot of issues for people with eyesight problems on this site, aren&apos;t Governments supposed to adhere to WCAG rules and a lot more stricter than non-Government websites do? The images don&apos;t even have alt tags on them, Web Developer common sense rule #1 — Always put alt tags on images, especially when they&apos;re being used as icons in content sections, wow.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>thegoodlab</author><text>&amp;#62;This is the perfect example of everything wrong with modern web design.&lt;p&gt;This seems to be quite the hyperbole. Sure, it might over use some modern design trends, but there is nothing inherently wrong with that.  Also, what is wrong with themes on themeforest?  Many are built with great design in mind.&lt;p&gt;More than anything govt. sites are not friendly, don&apos;t organize their content well, and do a horrible job at engaging their users.  I would say this site does all of three, making it &lt;i&gt;at least&lt;/i&gt; a decently designed and well built site.</text></comment>