RPI Refreshes their Website, Leaves Sour Taste in Mouth of Web Developers
April 9, 2009
Rensselaer, my alma mater to-be, just overhauled their website’s design. Previously, the website was presentable and did its job, but looked out of date. With the redesign, it catches up to the styles of the time, with a clean design. Reminiscent of the Rensselaer Union’s website, which funds clubs on campus, and RPInsider, an RPI student run blog, the school’s official website looks very clean, on the surface.
However, any web developer who dives into the site’s source will be struck aghast. The layout is completely constructed with tables, a relic from a time before CSS Stylesheets. Not only does the site use image based navigation, but it uses JavaScript for image swapping for hover states. Semantically, the site is a anemic. Apart from the navigation being image based, there is not a single header tag anywhere on the site.
Don’t get me wrong, the site looks great, but it was clearly made by someone not well versed in designing for the web. I wish a university as geared towards technology as RPI is would at least have developed a website with modern web standard.
Before I go, you may want to know: I got an offer for an internship at Google this summer. I’m really excited.
that seems so outrageous to me