Four posts in one day and it’s only two o’clock – can you tell that I don’t have a lot to do at work today? Mostly because I don’t really dare touch anything until the java boys (like java man but less hairy) have stopped beating the database with large sticks.
Anyway, want to see one of my favourite web sites? Dino Directory at the NHM is a very neat little site. A database of dinosaurs with a nice web front end that allows users to search and sort the data by a wide range of criteria – the large graphics lead novice users into a simple search by body shape function, whilst more advanced functions such as grouping by geographic and chronological proximity are readily available for more adventurous users. And then the results link through to the NHM‘s picture library which is another hidden gem in itself.
It’s a shame that the front end coding isn’t as nice as the information architecture. Looking at the code it seems that the header and footer were created by someone who knows what they’re doing – CSS layout, accessible, etc. Whilst the actual Dino Directory code in the middle is tables based and full of errors. Shame.
There’s also an RSS feed to keep user up to date with the latest dinos to be added. This week saw the addition of the very cute sounding Wannanosaurus. Oddly, this seems to be the only RSS feed on the whole NHM site.
Anyway, here’s a lovely site based on a great idea and well implemented (just needs a little work to make it standards compliant and accessible), but… it’s very Web 1.0 isn’t it? How could one jazz this up to make it Web 2.0? Define a dinosaur microformat and provide an API to allow dino data to be reused on other sites? Allow users to drag and drop dinosaurs into a personal folder and then play top trumps with other users? Or, if it ain’t broken, don’t try to make it buzzword compliant?