The country is gripped by political fever with the General Election just a week away. The media is full of stories, and the candidates are bust canvassing for support. But who’d the election based solely on their website? I present a short review of the major (and some minor) party’s homepage. First up the big three…
The Conservatives
The Conservatives’ website is the most modern looking. The homepage melds Manchester City style typography with BBC–esque boxes. It’s packed with information, but still manages to be clean and friendly. Under the hood things are pretty nice and neat, using some modern web technologies and semantic code. And it’s 2010′s essential website accessory – a large footer. Speed test: Grade E, 1124.6K. It’s a big page, but lots of optimisation can still be done on the site.
Labour
The Labour party’s homepage is a bit of a mashup of various styles. The Policies down the bottom don’t match the the slightly shadowed boxes, which don’t match the boxes to the right of the into image, which incidentally cover up the dropdown menus used for navigation. The layout is a little lose and doesn’t take full advantage of space. Looking deeper the code is not so neat and it appears extra code and scripts are loaded when not required. Speed test: Grade E, weighing in at a whooping 2559.6K! If Labour win they better start rolling out faster broadband.
Liberal Democrats
Out of the big three the Lib Dems are the only ones to have movement on their homepage, using 2008′s essential accessory, the scrolling-numbered-box-o-matic. The images it shows are pretty uninspiring, and overall the site feels a little cramped and dated. Jade and yellow are difficult colours to work with and don’t create the prettiest of sites. Unlike Labour and the Conservatives the Lib Dem’s don’t have a big juicy footer sitting at the bottom on the site. However, like the other two it does use everyone’s favourite JavaScript Library, and the code whilst a little messy is okay. Speed test: Grade D. It’s also the lightest of the bit three sites coming in at 496.7K, but then it’s only half the height.
Everyone Else*
BNP
The BNP homepage is quite neat, tidy and tall but does feel like it was made in 1999 and suffers from a few dodgy montages and lens flare. Some of the dropdown menus are too tall to fit in the window at once causing a usability problem. Looking at the code it’s not too bad, but does suffer from massive’ class addiction’. Speed test: Grade C, with a total weight of 747.3K
UK Independence Party
I thought I’d landed on the National Lottery homepage when I first saw the yellow and purple £ sign logo. But, no, this is the UK Independence Party website. This site wins the Massive Footer Award with half the homepage being comprised of footer. Speed Test: Grade B, which is impressive, and a total weight of 565.9K.
Green Party
Why, when you’re ‘green’, can you not see beyond green? The Green Party homepage is very green with green icons, green images and green headers. The code is no better or worse than anyone else and it gets a great Speed Test grade of A and weighs only 372.6K. Very Environmentally friendly.
Scottish National Party
I had to include this to stop complains of non-representation. The SNP have taken a different approach to everyone else, they’ve replaced the default homepage with a video and no obvious way of viewing the homepage. Not very clever. The actual homepage is a little dull, but does feature a patriotic waving flag which adds some visual interest. The is a large space at the bottom on the page, and some funny tool tips. Speed Test: Grade D. Total weight: 1060.9K
Conclusion
If I was voting solely based on website the Conservatives would be clear winners with their modern, clear design and good use of technology. They have a website for 2010 and beyond with the rest needing to play catch up.
A special mention goes the the Green Party Only Green micro site, which uses futuristic HTML5 code from 2022! It’s good to see HTML5 being adopted for major websites.
*This is not everyone else.
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