I know some states don't even have responsive websites either, or some do but subdomains are still outdated designs. I wonder if how well a state maintains their website, is an indication of the rest of the state's quality. I know next time I move I'm going to pick a state based on the weather anyways(thinking Florida). Very surprised Florida's website is very outdated. Mobile web design has been around for quite a while, and I feel like their website is a bit of a disservice to people wanting information on the go.

It seems like though states seem to care more about their website, than cities do... My local city here in Ohio website isn't even mobile friendly.

Edit: Well I found one subdomain that isn't mobile friendly - https://emrs.ehawaii.gov/emrs/public/home.html but still it looks like most of their sites are.

The design standards for the state were drawn up in collaboration between the CTO's office and my employers at the time (at no expense to the state). First and foremost: Mobile first, responsive.

That EMRS website appears to be the same old same old. It has been that way for at least 7-8 years now at the very least, as it looked like that already when I joined the company (2010, I think). I guess they haven't agreed to a redesign yet (most of the agencies jumped on the redesign opportunity, especially given there was no financial impact on them.)

Good to see that some state governments are making progress on the internet front.

Less opportunities for that crazy developer who wants to implement your costumer facing site in Common Lisp.

Somewhere, an LM-2 who has been faithfully serving requests since 1981 just cried a single, perfectly simulated electronic tear.

Yeah, that would never work: http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

Hopefully, but this is just for the federal government. Each state may have their own standard or no standard at all. I have a feeling people spend more time interacting with state government websites...

All the better that this is being given away for anyone to use.

There's no explaining needed, touch it, move it, it's direct manipulation vs indirect.

I'm sure, when we have weight, texture feedback, it will be even more "intuitive"

https://www.youtube.com/embed/BETSuT2RNLs?version=3&hl=en&fs...

Well put. In practice, largely correct. But literally minded me wants software also to be DOCUMENTED. E.g., at my Web site, each page has a link Help that explains the page hopefully in simple but clear terms.

But, wait, there's more:

At my Web site, also a user never has to try to guess what an icon does -- there are no icons. Civilizations had lots of icons, and eventually we got the Roman alphabet which I believe is a huge step forward. So, for links I just use words in the Roman alphabet.

The pages never do anything sudden, e.g., cover up what a user is reading with a pull-down, pop-up, or roll-over -- there aren't any.

For your

> Remember that software isn't intuitive, but familiar:

I do exploit that: The pages all use just the simplest, old HTML, and I've written not even a single line of JavaScript (JS). Microsoft's ASP.NET has a little standard JS for me, maybe having to do with positioning the cursor or some such. But, really, all the pages just use the most standard and elementary HTML controls 2+ billion people already know very well.

For more, the fonts are all relatively large, say, 24 pixels high. The colors all have high contrast, and the 25% of men who are partially red-green color blind will still do just fine.

There is just one Web site with just one user interface (UI), the same for workstations, desktop, laptops, tablets, pads, smartphones, watches, Dick Tracy's watch, Flash Gordon's magic decoder rings, and any toys in Cracker Jacks boxes that can run a Web browser up to date as of about 10 years ago.

Each Web page is exactly 800 pixels wide. The layout is not by HTML div elements but by tables and is always the same for all users.

There are always both vertical and horizontal scroll bars, and the pages should still be usable in a window as narrow as 300 pixels.

For more, how the UI works is simple and intuitive, so much so a 7 year old with a cheap smartphone and who knows no English (the text is all in very simple English with no alternatives) should be able to do fine with three minutes of instruction or 15 minutes of experimentation.

So, one of my key thoughts was to exploit for basic HTML just your

> Remember that software isn't intuitive, but familiar:

So, I stayed with just the simplest HTML knowing that 2+ billion people were then already quite "familiar".

Where can one see my Web site? At present nowhere! Since just now my development computer is sick from data corruption, e.g., crucial parts of Microsoft's .NET are not available to my software, my software won't run even on my development computer. Right, bummer.

But I've put together a nice list of parts for a new development computer also powerful enough for a good, first Web server for my Web site. Intend to order the parts and plug them together soon! Then I'll get the software and data on the new computer, make some tweaks in the code I have in mind, load a lot of data, and go live.

icons continue to be a form of universal language around the world for helping people to navigate where they need to go: this way to the bathroom, that bathroom has changing table, no smoking in this area, stop!, play/pause, radioactive, scald-danger, tent-camping, etc…

they don't communicate without ambiguity but they do serve a very functional and well-appreciated purpose for rapidly communicating information which would otherwise require more words and more thought.

adopting familiar icons around a website and providing a way to remove any ambiguity can enhance the experience; eliminating them altogether is somewhat of an overreaction

It's fairly well known that a lot of iconography is actually poorly understood without prior specific instruction. Do you know what this road sign means: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Zeichen_... ? How about this one: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Chile_ro... ?

For your second icon, it means to watch out for windsocks that have been blown off their poles.

For both, I wouldn't know the context.

But here I am talking about the subject of the OP, Web page design.

Yes, I have finally learned what the icons from Adobe's Acrobat PDF viewer and my favorite Web browsers do, but those are not issues of Web page design.

Looking at Web pages on the Internet and designed by others, usually I have to make at best just wild guesses at what the icons do, hover and wait for some explanatory English text, usually too small to read, or just use the TIFO method -- try it and find out.

I can say that in all my usage of Web pages, I have yet to find an icon on a Web page that I both (A) already understand and (B) have seen on more than one Web site. So, to me, on Web sites, that icons are at times and in places useful is cancelled by the fact that on Web sites the icons are not very standard. Or, for icons, I can't pronounce them, spell them, write them down, type them in, look them up in a dictionary or at Google, etc. The icons are usually little drawings, but usually I can't see the drawing clearly enough to guess what it is trying to represent. There is a icon getting popular that is a rectangle with an arrow through it -- I don't know what it means, and I wouldn't be able to look it up in a dictionary.

In my Web pages, the user interface is supposed to be so simple that any links, e.g., Help, Home, Inputs, Results, need just one very common English word.

Maybe some Web pages really need icons instead of words.

For icons more generally, e.g., for road signs, restroom signs, applications software other than just Web pages, that's a more complicated subject. For some of the icons for some applications software, I believe that some well written technical documentation is missing but needed.

  •For the more universal ones like + and - and trashcans
  •If I am absolutely constrained for space and dont have time to redesign
  •If the target audience can handle it or knows it perhaps

I think that was the point was that icons familiar to almost everybody are quite rare on the internet. Maybe no icons at all may be excessive but from personal taste I find layout and grouping clearer than icons in complex UI.

I mean, an alphabet is a huge step forward over freeform pictures, but the Roman alphabet offers basically nothing over its immediate ancestor the Greek alphabet except being a little better suited to ancient Latin.