NAS Forum - Brand update and maintenance.

Brand update and maintenance, 26 September - more details

..."more Details" links to information saying:

Brand and site maintenance - 26 September 2018
Owing to planned maintenance, this site will be unavailable overnight on 26 September, including the early hours of 27 September. We are doing two pieces of work:

Refreshing the design to reflect the National Autistic Society's new brand.
Updating the software to a new version. The main benefit to this should be improvements to the listing of messages in threads, and the flagging of new messages. We want to implement this in order to help with problems that users have reported

...The words "new brand" link to a (small) Page, here:
www.autism.org.uk/.../2018-09-13-changing.aspx

... いま, From myself: I begin this Thread because that is one of the things which I myself used to be most useful for, upon this Forum... But Now things are different and so I Post less (!). Also, However, not everyone notices the Main NAS message, and, also, WebPM says that "As ever, your feedback after the update is welcome." upon the following Thread:

community.autism.org.uk/.../82297

...Lastly from me, this next Link is actually the latest Thread for Posting "Strange" Things... but not many people remembered it...

community.autism.org.uk/.../

...That Thread contains many Links to other Threads which are for specific problems (Older Errors, Notifications, Ideas, Spam, Copybots, etc.).

In closing: All in all, Thanks NAS - especially Mr.WebPM. And Good Luck to all.

Parents Reply
  • Should it be down to the user to have a specific browser and plug-in? It's not difficult to create different stylesheets that the user can select from their profile or dropdown in the menu. They aren't likely to be complete stylesheets - just the colour schemes.

    It's not even difficult for the users to have the ability to choose their own colours/fonts on their profile screen and have them applied across the site (granted, it's not something other sites do - but it's still an easy task)

Children
  • Should it be down to the user to have a specific browser and plug-in?

    I think the same and have the same question.

  • If you wanted to use the most common UI for users, then why isn't the site built with bootstrap?

    From what I can see from users comments, you only need light & dark themes. And you don't need to be logged in to switch - that's what cookies are for.

    I've worked on government and city council websites and can tell you the colour schemes are nothing to do with anything other than being locked into long contracts with a company that charges £10k just to make minor text changes to the site, and are working to an antique framework that they have no idea how to change. 

    As for the colours, they are dictated by the councils own branding scheme.

    You appear to be over-thinking this, Go with the website stats (I have a website that shows more users visit by PC than mobile devices bucking the trend), and work to the audience. 

  • Hi Candlewax

    I think it depends how you look at it. If you see one site in isolation, then yes, that site needs to provide tools. However, Jakob's Law (from the usability guru Jakob Nielsen) suggests not doing that, but recognising that users want to use the same approaches on the various sites that they visit - mostly, probably, ones that have nothing to do with autism or this organisation. So, the effort is best spent on supporting as best we can those standard methods.

    Anything we did along the lines that you suggested would still probably not suit everyone (because we can see the varying needs here in terms of colours and design), we couldn't match the 15 colour choices above (and more if you design custom ones), and anyway it wouldn't be any help anywhere else.

    That, probably, is why other sites don't offer colour choices in profiles - and that would not work even on the charity's main site, simply because most users are not signed in and therefore don't have profiles. It's also why government sites appear also to be relying on the kinds of approach that I have described, in spite of their greater resources.

    I do appreciate that there are differing views here. I hope it's helpful for me to set out the alternative.

    Regards