Technical web sites, good and bad examples.

[janaf]

There's a discussion on the new Analog web site elsewhere on the forum. So I'm curious of what others think of various technical web sites. Good (apart from evvBlog) and bad.

I find I visit the digi-k site daily so I suppose I like it.

So shoot!

[Mechanical Menace]

Anything specifically to do with computing and/or programming are prime examples of the bad. Every single one.

[VK3DRB]

Almost all websites from the People's Republic of China.

I had a friend who tried to start a business helping the Chinese improve the quality of their websites by helping them explain themselves in modern English. There was no interest. His business failed.

Many of their manufacturers don't bother engaging someone fluent in English to translate their packaging, hence the following... http://www.engrish.com/

My friend said he suspected they have crap websites on purpose - if it did look professional, it might convey a higher price mentality.

[janaf]

Of the big IC manufacturers tend to use TI, LT, ST, ON sites.

Anything that starts up with a Flash animation splash falls very fast. Beyma loudspeaker site, great products but every generation of websites 

[BlueBill]

edit: Aaroncake.net

[janaf]

You mean Aaroncake.net?

[dannyf]

good: digikey, on-semi, ti, maxim, freescale.

bad: ST - I'm convinced that they hired NXP to develop their website. IRF and Fairchild are there too.

[Mechanical Menace]

What they fail to realize is that east Asian languages are not like English. It's a complex subject but characters are more like icons. They are literally little pictures of the things they represent, and the more complex ones are build up from multiple simpler pictures.

I'll never get my head around spoken Chinese of the dialects (sublanguages?) I know of. I can't seem to get myself to understand tone and pitch changes changing meaning...

Scanning a page like that is a much more visual exercise. Japanese and Chinese people can speed scan text a lot faster than English readers. To them it's a good design.

Number of words/syllables a second yes, not the amount of information imparted. Humans have a hard limit of how much information they can take in how fast, no matter your language. Spanish and English are great examples. To an English speaker a Spanish speaker sounds like they are talking very very fast, but the English speaker will impart just as much information in the same time. Spanish just uses more syllables to impart the same amount of information. English is a rather terse language, with a stupid amount of words.

[BlueBill]

You mean Aaroncake.net?

Yes. That's the site.

[janaf]

nxp, not intuitive, too many sub-levels, not even elementary comparison tables?, just long lists with pdfs? They lost me years ago.
IRF and Fairchild both used to be better imo. Now flashy design won over functionality.

[janaf]

Everyone wants dynamic update parametric searches, until they realize that they will always, always be slower and buggier compared to "old school update on final SEARCH click" only. You ever hit browser Back on those dynamic pages? Ever worked? Sometimes. Ever fast? Never.

[Bud]

Everyone wants dynamic update parametric searches

...with the data been pulled from the Cloud

[hans]

Microchip fails at searching appnotes or datasheets. Google finds datasheets better for parts than Microchip.

Parametric tables seem to be terribly slow on all retailer or manufacturer websites. Not sure why - because they are some IT sites (like tweakers.net) that also have a big catalog for IT parts pricewatch, and responds very fluently.

The Farnell family are pretty bad. Sometimes I have to clear cookies just to get them to work. The layout is slow and the choice of parameters often random, and often the ordering isn't correct. Searching only works for very specific part numbers or order codes.

i kind of solved this after some experimenting with opera. use opera browser, solely for farnel. but the java is kinda of crooked in it.

on the topic of bad sites. i officially complained to RS components about their site. it is impossible to search for things if you have a long list of unknown variables to fill in experimental circuits ... each time you click anything ... you have to wait ... it is a very un-intuitive design

my main complain description to them was ... "why is your website ... CLICK --- waaaaaaiiit ---CLICK --- waaaaaaiiit ---CLICK --- waaaaaaiiit ---CLICK --- waaaaaaiiit ---CLICK --- waaaaaaiiit ---CLICK --- waaaaaaiiit ---CLICK --- waaaaaaiiit ---CLICK --- waaaaaaiiit ---CLICK --- waaaaaaiiit --- .... and not .... click, click, click, click, click, click, click, and just 1 WAIT? "

RS is worst IMHO. Try importing a BOM from your CAD project into RS - forget it..
I did it once. Had 30 items to order in for 8 prototypes, so took the RS catalog numbers + Quantity*8 from the BOM export in Excel. Pasted them into RS:
"This item can only be ordered in multiple of 50. Please change your order quantity to match"

So I really have to manually update 30 lines?! You can't like.. round stuff up for me like the other retailers do?
And then if you have finally done (10 minutes later) so you click Update Cart : sorry session crashed, you have to start over from an empty cart.

Their site "crashes" also quite a lot if you're doing parametric searches, especially if you do more than 1 at once (because you do at any retailer site that's as slow as theirs).. nope, crashed again.

 

So instead, I just took the Farnell numbers, pasted them into their site.. got the MOQ complaint, clicked order and it was OK.

[tszaboo]

To an English speaker a Spanish speaker sounds like they are talking very very fast, but the English speaker will impart just as much information in the same time. Spanish just uses more syllables to impart the same amount of information. English is a rather terse language, with a stupid amount of words.

Do you know how do you say "No." in Spanish?
"No, no no nononono."

[Mechanical Menace]

Sure, but you have to understand how that affects searching for stuff on a busy screen. When you know what the character for money is you can scan for finance related stuff very quickly without having to understand the text at all. You are doing image matching. It's like how western web sites use familiar icons, except that for Chinese it works in text as well.

Which is funny because we all (subconsciously) miss most letters when reading words because we basically look for the starting letter and basic shape of a word as if it was a picture. It's one of the reasons we read something quicker if it isn't in ALL CAPS, as we learned when designing motorway signage. <-- That may be why the Japanese have some equally "fussy" looking sites even though the language is sooo very different to Mandarin. Yes the Kanji may be pictographs and based on the Chinese's but at the end of the day they use it like their other 2/3 systems, more like an actual alphabet.

But I prefer text heavy sites myself, textual links instead of icons etc so meh.



Back on topic, Mouser's site isn't bad.

[mrflibble]

Good examples: digikey, mouser, TI, old Analog, National before being gobbled by TI.

Bad example: new Analog.

Golden reference: timecube.

[mrflibble]

bad: ST - I'm convinced that they hired NXP to develop their website. IRF and Fairchild are there too.

ST ... almost forgot that one. ST definitely is on the list of bad example. Information on that site is impressively hard to find without google.

[German_EE]

Good sites:

www.picaxe.com
www.hilberling.de
www.cableorganizer.com
www.mouser.com
www.digikey.com
www.http://sound.westhost.com/


Bad sites:
www.powerwerx.com
www.arrl.org
www.nxp.com
www.wired.com

and, the worst site in the world:
www.rtl.de


Note: I browse with Adblock enabled which makes things much more tolerable.

[atferrari]

edit: Aaroncake.net

Understand you consider it good. Isn't it?

[janaf]

Do I sense some irony here? 

I have to like he's using the old Snitz forum code. The best. 15 years ago.

edit: Aaroncake.net

Understand you consider it good. Isn't it?

[BlueBill]

edit: Aaroncake.net

Understand you consider it good. Isn't it?

No. Opposite of good.

[atferrari]

Hola Bill,

I find it simple to navigate, loading quite quickly and you know where to go for what is offered. Aestethics? Possible bad but I prefer that as long I can go back and forth with no hassle.

What is bad there for you? Being ironic is not part of my usual attitude.

[VK3DRB]

BAD:

1. Anyone around long enough (at least 10 years) will remember trying to find datasheets on the Motorola website . It was dreadful - anarchy by design. The modern day TI and ST websites are dreams compared with the Motorola one.

2. Next one, IBM's website. Full of glossy sales talk, without much down-to-earth content. They lost the plot years ago.

3. Altium. Horrible.

GOOD:

1. Digikey definitely has a great website, except if you are trying to upload a BOM from a spreadsheet (good but not great). Maybe I do it the hard way, but their search could improve to sort on the lowest to highest price AND qty 1 AND are in stock. I love how they link to the datasheets and link in with Altium Designer.

2. The EEVBLOG. Well thought out, easy to find old video blogs, plenty of value add and entertaining. IBM could learn a thing or two from the EEVBLOG about sharing useful information rather than talking marketing ad nauseum.

[Richard Head]

Molex--Terrible

[janaf]

Millmax, different from most. Good but somewhat slow. However structure of part search makes it bearable. But it could be more snappy.