What do you think of the new Bradley Website?

[oakville smoker]

I dont post a lot these days but I did click on the web site.  Aside from buttons not working, I have to say that Bradley that turkey is in has to be the cleanest smoker I have ever seen!  I would bet its just a brand new one with a pretend turkey in it.  Just an observation.  Not even sure its been seasoned.

[DaWiz]

Before I go into what I see as "wrong" with the new Bradley site, I will explain my background in computers. I retired in April of this year after 40 years of computer development, both programming and web development; on mainframes, minicomputers and microcomputers (PCs). I started doing online computing with a 110 Baud modem phone. At 11 characters a second, anything done for online viewing had to be succinct and to the point.  The creation of the Internet and higher bandwidth has led to websites with times graphics and "cutesy" effects.

To further complicate, or obfuscate, the web experience, a lack of standards for business websites has resulted in sites that range from excellent to horrible. Part of the problem is that web developers are young and have good eyes.

I have viewed the new Bradley website with Internet Explorer 9 and 11 and Firefox 12.0. I will not use chrome so do not know how it is displayed with that product.

My first observation is that the global page does not display well in IE on a wide screen monitor (27").  It does display OK in Firefox 12.0.  This does mot mean that the page is easy to follow or read.  The graphic backgrounds are distracting and make it more difficult to read the overlayed text.

Books are printed black on white for a reason - readability.  White on black, just about any color on black is difficult to read as is text on a moving video.

I appreciate the effort that Bradley has made to create a unique web site but am put off by the results.  If I was not a returning customer, I would not stay on the site long enough to figure it out.

My suggestion is to layout the web site on paper, planning links to various functions/features and the code the web pages.  After coding a page, it should be checked for functionality in multiple browsers and tweaked until it works in all of them correctly.

Consideration should be given to the visually impaired as well - get someone older to check out the web pages for readability. 

[RedJada]

Before I go into what I see as "wrong" with the new Bradley site, I will explain my background in computers. I retired in April of this year after 40 years of computer development, both programming and web development; on mainframes, minicomputers and microcomputers (PCs). I started doing online computing with a 110 Baud modem phone. At 11 characters a second, anything done for online viewing had to be succinct and to the point.  The creation of the Internet and higher bandwidth has led to websites with times graphics and "cutesy" effects.

To further complicate, or obfuscate, the web experience, a lack of standards for business websites has resulted in sites that range from excellent to horrible. Part of the problem is that web developers are young and have good eyes.

I have viewed the new Bradley website with Internet Explorer 9 and 11 and Firefox 12.0. I will not use chrome so do not know how it is displayed with that product.

My first observation is that the global page does not display well in IE on a wide screen monitor (27").  It does display OK in Firefox 12.0.  This does mot mean that the page is easy to follow or read.  The graphic backgrounds are distracting and make it more difficult to read the overlayed text.

Books are printed black on white for a reason - readability.  White on black, just about any color on black is difficult to read as is text on a moving video.

I appreciate the effort that Bradley has made to create a unique web site but am put off by the results.  If I was not a returning customer, I would not stay on the site long enough to figure it out.

My suggestion is to layout the web site on paper, planning links to various functions/features and the code the web pages.  After coding a page, it should be checked for functionality in multiple browsers and tweaked until it works in all of them correctly.

Consideration should be given to the visually impaired as well - get someone older to check out the web pages for readability.

I was one of the people to got first crack at the new sites and review before they went live. There were some issues that were corrected. Personally I don't see anything that bad about the sites now that there live. I'm running on a macbook pro, Safari 6.1 and Firefox 24 and see no issues. What I do find interesting is that I'm pretty sure most of us own a Bradley of some sorts. Then you get all this negative feed back on the new sites. Don't really know what to make of that?

[DaWiz]

[quI was one of the people to got first crack at the new sites and review before they went live. There were some issues that were corrected. Personally I don't see anything that bad about the sites now that there live. I'm running on a macbook pro, Safari 6.1 and Firefox 24 and see no issues. What I do find interesting is that I'm pretty sure most of us own a Bradley of some sorts. Then you get all this negative feed back on the new sites. Don't really know what to make of that?

The point I was trying to make is that the site will work ok for some and not ok for others.  O;der people will possibly be put off by the site (I know I would).  IMHO the site was built by sp,epne who either does not have much experience or does not care about reacjomg a wider aidience.  If Bradley wants to appeal to the widest possible aidience, they will rethink the layout of the sire and do an easier to navigate (and read) site.