Comments on: Comparing the Candidate’s Sites

By: La campagne d’Obama et l’utilisation du Web par les partis politiques du Québec. — Michael Carpentier.com

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:29:17 +0000

[...] Comparing the Candidate’s Sites » UIE Brain Sparks [...]

By: Adam

Adam — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:27:30 +0000

If content is the king, accessibility must be the queen.

Even with broadband internet, I find Obama’s website too slow to load. The Website looks like a beautiful poster, but it maybe too fancy and to cumbersome for non-techies.

By: tedd

tedd — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:25:28 +0000

I realize that there are larger issues here, because they have to get their word out immediately and they really don’t have time for the finer issues. But, isn’t that always the case?

If you run both sites through the W3C validator, you’ll see that clearly both sites fail miserably (McCain wins for number of errors). I don’t even want to look at how badly these sites do with respect to accessibility, best practices, or any of the many other aspects that us web developers hold as important.

To me, this is just another example of government not getting it right. Yes, I realize that these sites are NOT government sites, but they do represent the next President of the United States and he did approve the message and medium.

Cheers,

tedd

By: Lacey

Lacey — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:48:15 +0000

this is a great analysis - thanks! we've been keeping a Presidential Hopefuls Scorecard over at our blog if you're interested in checking out another perspective. we've looked at accessibility, engagement pathways and navigation thus far and the current score is: Obama 2 / McCain 1.

By: Kristina Halvorson

Kristina Halvorson — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 01:21:00 +0000

Excellent read – thank you.

Of course, anything that ends with “Content is king!” is bound to put a smile on my face.

By: Jared Spool

Jared Spool — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:07:52 +0000

@Chris: I agree about the social media. It would be interesting to see what they've each done there. @Eric: My understanding is my assessment will be part of a bigger piece on the New York Times' CampaignStop Blog. I'll link to it when they've posted it.

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 23:19:29 +0000

When will the story about your review appear in the Times?

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 23:19:00 +0000

While websites are still an important tool, I would like to see you measure what each candidate is doing via social media. There, I think you will find a different story. True, content is king, but it is now found in a variety of places (Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Flickr, etc.) besides a website.