Gravis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> the only part that makes me weep is the fact that
> the front page is 504KB! i could have save 300KB
> with code alone because the site is absurdly
> complex and bloated.
>
> oh... there is also some nice change for the
> updated site.,, they are spying on you in plain
> sight. ;)
>
> // WebTrends SmartSource Data Collector Tag
> // Version: 8.6.0
> // Tag Builder Version: 2.1.0
> // Created: 1/6/2009 22:54:04
>
>
Webtrends is not really spying. Most commercial sites use webtrends. It creates detailed site traffic reports. Page views, hits, "paths" followed through the site, most visited pages, time spent between accesses (a rough estimate of how long people spend on each page), top referrers, top referred pages. Plus things like types of browsers users visiting the site used, rough guess to country, region, city, etc, and other things.
Webtrends doesn't track personal information. It doesn't link to login information to connect traffic to specific people or anything like that.
>
> the site seems to be built around jquery and it
> includes the css for altering the page: (see
>
http://www.whitehouse.gov/includes/eop/admin.css)
>
jquery is just a lazy way of trying to do what some people believe is "AJAX" but is really just DOM manipulation (like the 1,2,3,4 buttons changing the DIV where the photo is.) Actually, jquery can be an easy way to actually implement some AJAX on a site, but they aren't using it for AJAX here. Everything is already preloaded and visibility is turned on and off, so it's just javascript and CSS manipulating the DOM.
> this page is insulting. they obviously didnt have
> a programmer optimize anything and i can only hope
> no security holes have been left open... but there
> is a good chance there have been considering the
> amateur nature of the site.
>
Someone tried to format the HTML, at least. They didn't do a great job, but it's better than some sites where everything is just jumbled together and haphazardly coded. It's not amateur, but it is very beginner "professional". Well, what I mean is, it's on par, coding-wise, with what a lot of not-so-good web developers do.
>
> whitehouse.gov's code makes fairfaxcounty.gov look
> like a work of art.
>
True. But the design of the site, the appearance, isn't that bad. The design is clean, except I hate multi-column dropdown menus. Put them all in one column, dammit.