[LINK] Australia Post's new web site preview

[Ivan Trundle]

After waiting forever for it to load...

My only concern about the preview is that it doesn't fit on my screen. I can only view the top portion of the site, so miss out on the latest news, personalised stamps, Australia Today magazine, and the bottom menu.

Using a standard 1024 x 768 might not be standard anymore. Those with 800 x 600 have a lot of scrolling to do!

The oversized header is therefore a waste of valuable space, as is the whitespace directly underneath with only the font scaling, RSS and print icons (people still use these things?). If I had to use such anachronisms, I'd place them alongside the Home | Contact us | Help... though I see that a breadcrumb trail is meant to fill the white space when needed (which might be useful even though the site is not very big).

The dropdown headings look way oversized and clunky (unprofessional) on a Mac compared with the rest of the fonts used, but maybe this is a non-Windows thing. It looks like it was designed by someone else when the rest of the site uses different fonts and scaling (maybe it is meant to look web2.0-ish: but the rest of the site doesn't, so it jarrs).

Other than that, the site is fine (taking into account the overall accessibility issues mentioned by others) - but heaven help those viewing it on an iPhone: the top dropdown menus are too light to be viewed clearly until scaled enormously - but they work with reasonable contrast (i.e. dropdown options) once the dropdown is chosen.

iT