[LINK] Australian Carbon Emission Strategy

[Tom Worthington]

On 10/07/11 14:45, Jan Whitaker wrote:

> I was very impressed at the level of this website, despite the
> reliance on PDF documents.  ...

The Australian Government's "Clean Energy Future" website doesn't rely 
on PDF. The documents are provided in HTML, one chapter, or fact sheet, 
per web page. As an example the executive summary: 
<http://www.cleanenergyfuture.gov.au/clean-energy-future/securing-a-clean-energy-future/#content01>.

The web version seems to be an automated conversion from the same source 
used for the PDF and print versions. Some tables are omitted from the 
web version. But this is better than not having a web version at all.

There is a link to the PDF at the top of each web page version. The 
strategy of displaying the web version of the document before offering 
the PDF option is a good one, but the PDF link should be at the bottom 
of the web page, not the top. Many people used to only having PDF will 
click on "Download the Clean Energy Plan" without realizing they already 
have the document on the screen in front of them. Moving the link to the 
end of the document will save many unnecessary downloads, as very few 
people will read to the bottom of the document and so most would  never 
see the PDF link to click on.

The Facebook "like" button is of questionable value on a government 
policy web site. When I looked on Sunday, only 11 people had indicated 
they liked the policy. Also this function requires 170 kbytes of 
additional Javascript, wasting resources and raising privacy concerns.

ps: The carbon pricing announcement comes at a good time for the makers 
of LED lighting. While LEB blub replacements are still too expensive for 
most home use, factories have ramped up production of lighting units for 
commercial, retail, outdoor and street lighting: 
<http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/07/led-office-factory-retail-street-and.html>.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra