Pinellas County government site on the Trail
This is the the official government site for the Pinellas County Trail. I feel the colors are attractive, however the links are scattered about the page in a haphazard fashion. I can find no rhyme nor reason for why they chose to put each group where they did.
The CSS is embedded and is primarily used for changing font sizing. They pseudo-classes for link behavior, to keep the links, whether visited or not (via :link and :visited) a deep navy blue. I cannot see why this would be desirable. :hover pseudo-class is used to outline the link text and turn the link text red (#ccccc). CSS is valid per the W3 validator.
This page's mark up fails W3 validation (checked as html 4.01 transitional), with five errors and two warnings. It lacks a doctype, images are missing alt attributes, and because of the missing doctype, the validator gets very confused at the use of "align" in the first link at page bottom left "Bike & Skate Rental Shops near the Trail."
If you look at the upper left middle section of the page, you'll see a set of links beginning with "About the Pinellas Trail", we can look at another problematic aspect of this site. First, note that no design elements carry over from the original page. This is about as plain jane as it gets. My biggest problem is with placement of the content though. "About the Pinellas Trail" really implies historical, trivia and back ground information and we have a little of that. We also have the rules, which properly should go on the home page - they are simply too important to be tucked away back here, where very few people ever visit. The contact information, or at least important emergency information such as the ranger's phone number really ought to be on the front page. Not because I think riders are likely to go look it up on the web in an emergency, but if it is prominently displayed, they're more likely to write it down before the ride or put it in their cell phones.
This page does not use CSS at all, and also lacks a doctype. It fails W3 validation for the same reasons the home page does..
Let us take a look at the site versus the actual needs of the people who use the trail:
First, we have the people who plan to hit the trail and maybe pencil it on to their calendar but never quite make it. This site serves them well as they effectively don't need anything from it.
The next group of users are casual trail users. They usually go singly or with friends and family. Typically, they won't wander too far from where they jump onto the trail. Usually this is at a county park. Their needs are also very basic, though having the emergency contact information more prominently placed could save a life. If anyone is going to have a serious accident, it will likely be one of these users and a park ranger less than a mile away contacted directly is likely going to be faster than E911 on a cell phone.
The more serious trail riders could be considered hobbyist cyclists (I'd fall into this category) and the "More-Cyclist-Than-Thou" crowd who all look like Lance Armstrong. They tend to take longer trips, jump on point, hit a couple of parks, and then shoot the breeze at the bike shop might be an average hobbyist trip. Running the trail from 34th to Tarpon in just over an hour for the more serious crowd.
Both groups of riders to tend to make planning a high priority, things like spare tires, tools (irons, hex wrenches, properly sized sockets and/or an adjustable wrench), a first aid kit and usually a lot more besides are staples for these riders. As are cell phones, preferably with internet access.
Another common attribute is they tend to ride in groups, though they'll start off in different locations. Good mapping can be a blessing alongside a handy cell phone.
Sadly, this site only provides maps in PDF format. Many phones just won't want to deal with that, mine will but I'd still use the many other better tools on the web rather than this site. I don't insist they recreate the wheel by remaking these tools from scratch, but they could at least provide a friendly link to them for people who don't want to try to resize a PDF on a tiny cell phone screen in the glaring sun.
An example of two different rides on the trail from one of my favorite sites:
St. Pete Bike Club route from Bikely.com
Tarpon to St. Petersburg Route
I think this site had a lot of potential, but fails all but the users who need it least due to a lack of planning. I love the trail, hope they expand it even further and perhaps rethink their web presence while they're at it.
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- © 2008 Chris Demmons