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Ouch! VML seems to have a standards-compliant site (excluding semantic names), but I guess that’s risky design for clients :P.

I do like how the whole page blows up if you disable styles!

OMG,
This site SUCKS! in so many ways. I can’t believe anyone actually let this piece of crap squeeze out of their design cheeks. I cannot say enough bad things about this site. Man, there was a time I’d considered VML talented, but obviously, the luster has worn off. ICK ICK ICK!

Oh, that is nasty. Too bad! For every step we take forward, there is always someone taking two steps back, isn’t there?

Don’t websites these days have to be built with accessibility in mind? Isn’t there a government thing where you can get a slap on the wrist if someone complains about the lack of accessibility?

Cameron — I believe it’s a law in the UK, and a law in the US for government sites. A professional sports team walks a fine line since they’re funded by both the city and the citizens, but I would have hoped that VML show some responsibility and do things the right way. Alas, it is crap.

Great article, Kevin. What I can’t figure out is why they felt they needed to update? The Zeldman design was perfectly servicable. I suppose this is just one more example of how the front office of the Chiefs have their heads completely up their asses.

Thanks so much for spreading the word about this redesign. It really is discouraging to see an organization take a step back with their site and go this direction. What was the reasoning? Did the marketing department just think that it didn’t have a ‘wow’ factor because that other football team’s website has music, etc.? Did the site visitors complain? Are they really going to now? I guess the biggest fear I can picture now is that it appears in Print and/or Communication Arts Interactive Annual.

Hmmm, can a website predict a teams upcoming season? Let’s hope so. Go Broncos!!! Oh wait, their website sucks too…hmmm

Darn. We really need some sort of, I dunno… hall of shame for these sorts of failed redesigns? At least the KC Chiefs are in good company, down there with the UK Disney Store…

While I can’t figure out why in the world VML would do this, I do understand why the Chiefs marketing staff had to muck things up. After all, when the coaching staff and managment can’t get their team past the first round in the playoffs you’ve got to do Something right? (that’s a joke…)

Seriously, I worked on the Dallas Cowboys website a while back. Marketing in the NFL is all about “buzzwords”.

Why are marketing departments so completely inept so often when it comes to the web? I mean, who on earth would think that the new design is better?

Quote: Marketing in the NFL is all about ‘buzzwords’.

That’s not the only place it’s all about buzzwords. Corporate America is just as liable as the NFL.

That is mind-blowingly disasterous. Not to mention expensive, since the home page is nearly 3 times the filesize to serve up and the content must be harder to update with all the Flash badness.

After ESPN.com made the celebrated move to a standards-compliant home page several years ago, realizing tremendous bandwidth savings, I figured that other sports websites would follow suit. Or at least not screw up by reverting back to bloated 1997 table hacks. Guess not.

Haha! Look at the message I got back. They must be getting a lot of e-mails to start getting this rude (or they’re just plain assholes — notice how he actually takes the time to visit my website and tries to flame with with my own words)

Dear Kevin:

I would find your comments more “genuine” if you had your facts
straight. We’ve used nothing but Real Player for five years. My guess
is you RARELY viewed kcchiefs.com.

Do you even know Jeffrey Zeldman? I do, and we’re good friends. I’m
sure he would find your comments quite humorous. Did you ask him why
he is no longer designing the site? I appreciate you trying to stick
up for him but reading comments on a “web standards” forum and then
popping off is a little much don’t you think?

“I’ve pretty much given up on learning sound design for the time
being as I have neither the time nor the energy to teach myself
something completely new after working all day. ”

I think you summed it up pretty well.

Good luck with your job search.

Best,

Lance

>Name: Kevin
>Email: info@kevinsweeneydesign.com
>Subject: I want to report an error on www.kcchiefs.com.
>
>You’re website is horribly inaccessible and terribly coded. I can’t view
>the Chiefs TV because I don’t use RealPlayer anymore. Why don’t you use
>Flash Video? Or web standards? Happy Cog did such a wonderful job and it’s
>a shame to see your new web designers at VML botch the job.

The new site really is a catastrophe. I don’t understand why they didn’t stick with the nice site that they had.

Lance definitely seems a bit defenisive, ahem guility. Does anyone know what Zeldman’s take is on all this?

This blog is a goldmine of ideas and best practices, but on this article I have to dissent a little. Web developers should exercise caution when criticizing the work of others since they are really not in a position to know what the parameters and limitations were for someone else’s project. Perhaps the budget was small, or the client’s representative for the project was impossible to work with, etc., etc. While Zeldman is correct to say "the user is never wrong", it is also true the developer’s first responsibility is to please the client.

While it is generally unfortunate the Chiefs are moving away from CSS, and the separation of content and presentation that implies, they may wish to simply remake their site from scratch every year and probably have the budget to do so. I would have to say if the primary demographic for the site is teenage boys on broadband, then the current design is indeed more likely to be effective than the old one.

Finally, whether a site has the proper doctype or fulfills the W3C committee’s validator is pretty meaningless for reasons that have been well discussed here and elsewhere. What matters is whether the site displays reasonably well in the browsers of their users, that’s all.

But man, the index page certainly does take a long time to load even on broadband before showing any content at all (though it is more a function of the extensive table structure than the weight per se), and I would concur RealPlayer sucks though it might make sense for legacy reasons.

I can not argue with the Chiefs wanting to redesign their site every year or every other year — that’s their perogative, and I would imagine they are more concerned about the “cool factor” (video, flash, dropdowns, wizzy and buzzy things) than most clients. However, I do put full blame on VML for executing this behemoth.

The design could have easily been standards-compilant, fully accessible, and display properly in every browser. They simply chose to ignore every best practice, and in fact went in the complete opposite direction — like requiring a visitor to have Javascript and Flash active to view the main content.

While it is true clients should get the features they want, we can not expect clients to even know about standards much less demand their agency use them. It is the developer’s responsibility to deliver a product that is in line with contemporary best practices.

Also, I have never criticized another site like this. I bring it up because:

1. The Chiefs are my team. I want them to succeed on the field and on the web. I take this abomination personally.
2. The site was standards-compliant, and this is a huge step backward.
3. The crappiness level is so high I just had to bitch. I mean c’mon — six levels of nested tables? That’s just dumb.

But isn’t that the beauty of seperating content from presentation? They could redesign every month and only need to change their CSS.

In the long run, they are going to be spending more money on updates now that they’ve done away with most of the CSS, am I right?

“While it is generally unfortunate the Chiefs are moving away from CSS, and the separation of content and presentation that implies, they may wish to simply remake their site from scratch every year and probably have the budget to do so. I would have to say if the primary demographic for the site is teenage boys on broadband, then the current design is indeed more likely to be effective than the old one.”

Well, I’m not sure what exactly would make you think the target demographic is “teenage boys on broadband” — NFL football is our nation’s pastime and has as wide a viewing demographic as just about any type of entertainment in the word — but it doesn’t matter. You’re failing to see the point. The point is not that this concept is less effective — it may well be more effective. The point is that the execution of this concept is very, very poor.

“Finally, whether a site has the proper doctype or fulfills the W3C committee’s validator is pretty meaningless for reasons that have been well discussed here and elsewhere. What matters is whether the site displays reasonably well in the browsers of their users, that’s all.”

I agree 100%...except that it’s just as easy to, if not easier, to write stands-based code that would not only ensure the “site displays reasonably well in the browsers of their users,” but also meet basic accessibility requirements and work well on alternative browsers and devices.

It’s sort of like you tell me that you need ten dollars, and all I have is a twenty. I offer you the twenty, as you don’t take it — because you only need ten dollars. Of course you don’t need twenty dollars, but it’s just as easy for you to take a twenty as it is a ten, and you can do more with it.

I may not know the technical problems behind the new site, I Just know that it isn’t nearly as nice as the old. I not only think it is slower, it has less appeal.