So I go to my local library's website, to search their catalogue. I figure this will be simple. Nope.
Hit the catalogue search... "Enable JavaScript!" Great. Well, this isn't going to be too actively malicious, I figure, so NoScript is told to let them use it just this once. Sure enough, up comes a very shiny, hyperanimated failure to be useful, but it does have a box up top with "Enter your query here" in it. So, I mouse over it... and the text disappears.
This is, as you've no doubt surmised, a bad sign.
Five minutes I wasted trying to get that box to accept input. Wouldn't have it. No doubt the JavaScript works ever so shinily in whichever browser they tested it in, but in Firefox, it was broken.
What was wrong with a web form to query the database? Hmmm?
What I'd love is for them to split it out. Have their shiny piece of useless under "Browse the catalogue" and give me a nice simple entirely serverside web form to "query the catalogue", otherwise known as "I know what book I want"... |
