[thelist] Site check: Staples.com
Ian Anderson
ian at zstudio.co.uk
Tue Sep 20 07:27:36 CDT 2005
Shawn K. Quinn wrote:
>
>The fact that I got a blank page. Thus, it's broken.
>
This discussion has been quite interesting, and in general I am in
agreement with Ken's position regarding pragmatic web design.
However, it cannot be argued that the code delivered as the staples
default page is acceptable practice;
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<title></title>
<script language="JavaScript">
function doIt() {
window.location = "http://" + window.location.host + "/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/home?storeId=10001&langId=-1";
}
doIt();
</script>
<body>
<a href="http://www.staples.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/home?storeId=10001&langId=-1"></a>
</body>
</html>
Note the empty anchor element, that could have linked to the real home
page, allowing search engines and users without JavaScript to enter the
site with one extra action. Even keeping the JavaScript redirection -
(why on earth not server side or even META refresh?), the empty anchor
element is a rather serious mistake.
Shawn is perfectly correct, IMO, in that this should have been handled
on the server side, not in client side scripting.
Cheers
Ian
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