Left In Lowell

Hate is such a strong word. But if you could hear the curses on this side of the keyboard as I make my daily journey to the Lowell Sun Online, you’d get it. If you take out the hate part, this could even be construed as constructive criticism from a seasoned web surfer and designer.

1. I hate that my popup blocker in IE has to work overtime. On multiple pages. Look, popups are passé. Most people block them with free software that comes with the browser or that they install. We never, ever see them. Time to ax the useless annoyance.

2. I hate that links to articles die after two weeks. This is really not useful. But…if you want me to quote excerpts from your online articles and allow the link to the complete text, that I always make sure I have, to go poof, that’s not my problem.

3. I hate that the website takes quite some time to load. I’m a busy woman here, I have a business to run on top of this blog, and I visit plenty of newspaper or TV news sites with far more content that take mere milliseconds to load; it’s time to optimize your site. If it’s this bad for me on broadband, it’s killer for dialup.

4. I hate that the website doesn’t get updated until Zathras knows when. Now, I understand if you want to make your print subscribers feel all special for getting the news long before us web-surfing leeches…it makes perfect sense from a business standpoint. But I like to do my blogging in the morning - blogging and breakfast really taste great together. And even if I get why you probably do it, this is a list of things I hate about Lowell Sun Online. I’m just trying to be honest. A few more early updates wouldn’t hurt?

5. As a web designer and artist and web aficionado, I think you could stand to redesign the graphics. OK, I don’t hate the graphics, but I don’t drool over them either. You could get so much slicker for not too much cost. As I tell my clients, it never hurts to look more polished than your actual business really is.