Ramblers thumbs up

[David]

I've just been looking at the Ramblers' Association (http://www.ramblers.org.uk/) website and I was very pleasantly surprised.

View code and you will see that it is all pretty much semantically correct with page structure dealt with by CSS. Notice that the doctype is HTML 4 strict - a slightly strange decision because the code is almost XHTML 1 transitional. I wonder why they did that - old browser compatibility maybe?

The look-and-feel is great and the navigation very good considering the complexity. The left/local nav has a very nice touch, the link shows a ticked folder when it has been visited - nice use of a:visited in the CSS.

They have also taken accessibility to a new level. Just check out what they call the "Readability" drop-down menu at top right.

I'd give the site 8 out of 10. What do you think?

[Tom]

Its a pleasant site but have a look at their 'sister site' Rambler's Holdiays (http://www.ramblersholidays.co.uk/). I've just used it o book a holiday for my brother and did not find it friendly. It splits into 2 sites, for Britian and Rest of World and 'Britain' includes Ireland and there is in fact only one holiday in Ireland. Having chosen this, t hey do not ahve a working ecommerce system which lets you book and pay on line. In fact even when you phone them they will not take credit card details. I think it must lose them a good number of bookings