Website Review of the Shawano County Website
I had thought that it would be harder to find a website that uses HTML tables to present tabular data, however, through the recommendation in the lecture, I was able to find one right in my backyard. The Shawano County Website definitely has that box look about it. It also is not responsive, and the majority of text links are actually images, not CSS styling of HTML text. It makes sense as to why the latest in HTML5 and CSS3 stylings haven’t yet made it to this homepage. A site redesign would certainly be a complete overhaul and create quite an expense on the taxpayer. Despite the fact that this site is not “up-to-date”, it works quite well for its stated purpose on a desktop computer. On a mobile device, however, it is not optimal at all. When checking this address in the W3C Validator Service, it fails miserably with 233 Errors and 6 warnings.
While clicking around the site, I did find that they may be updating some of their pages, though probably in phases. The county calendar’s most recent month offered is “March of 2020” so there seems to be some lack of updating, however, when clicking on the link for town board meetings, I was brought to this web address: https://coshawanowi.civicweb.net/Portal/. This page does not use HTML tables to present tabular data. It is in HTML5 and primarily uses lists and divs along with CSS stylings. The site is responsive; however, the images don’t appear to be.
My conclusion is that Shawano County is, in fact, working toward the newest trends in web design, albeit, at a slower, manageable pace for the community. Had it not been for this class, I certainly wouldn't have been able to recognize these changes so clearly or more importantly, why the changes have to be made. I have to say, kudos to Shawano County for working toward the newest trends in Web Design and making the Shawano County Website accessible for all.