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04/09/2004: "Quality Politics 2 - An Alternative Look at NI Politics Part 2"

[revised & updated]

Part 2 of our design critique of NI Political Party websites we take another look at the same set of websites to see if they have actually made any improvements. The majourity of the sites made no significant changes.


Alliance Party
Now here's a nicely presented site. The front page is excellent, good use of colour, links to the main sections, up to date maintenance. No improvement from last time but it's excellent.
I'll give this one a 9/10 and itching to give it 10.


DUP
Good thing i'm not commenting on their politics and the slogan top of page. The web site is decent-ish. The red and blue features strongly of course. Nothing special about the site though and way too image intensive for me. Btw is Al Quaeda not spelled "Al Qaeda" or "Al-Qa'ida" (Arabic for "the base")?
Very generous at 6/10.


Green Party
The Green Party seem to have taken a cheapie route by using a CMS, nothing necessarily wrong with that but the site is damn plain looking. The webmaster really needs to do a bit of work to brighten it up a bit.
Doesn't inspire confidence at all, but at least the logo can be found now, on my last visit here it was difficult to actually spot any kind of title or logo.
Raised to 5/10 ... Extra point because Marie Perry is looking fine on the front page.


PUP
Last time they has a browser resizer and only 1 page, for that reason the didn't even get a single point. The resizer is gone and they have added a few more pages. They don't fully understand the value of frames.
2/10 (improved but a long way to go.)


SDLP
The SDLP site is decent enough, good bright nationalist colours, standard 3 column. Good use of photos, nice and clear. Nothing imroved that I see so it remains...
7/10 (a few suggestions for improvement).


Sinn Féin
I'm not crazy about the Sin Féin site. It's well put together, clear content, slight over use of images but the colour scheme needs work and the menus could do with a bit of life.
A harshish 6/10 with a thumbs up for being bilingual.


UKUP
Not much to be said, quite poor. The date says 2004 but the site says not redesigned since the birth of the internet. No improvement since last visit, even then I was generous.
3/10.


UUP
This is a good site! Nice and clear, simple layout with good use of colour. If they removed the top banner image (flash) and bring the top navigation bar up to the top of the screen i'd give it almost top marks.
Comments still stand since last visit.
8/10, point to be gained if they remove the flash logo.


Womens Coalition
Stephanie and Chris need to do some more work. Could be a nice enough site but for the colour scheme which is not at all pretty. Some more design tweaks here and there are recommended too.
I was generous last time, the navigation colour is disgusting
Dropped to 4/10!

Overall results the same
Alliance win it again, the UUP were very close with the SDLP coming in a bit behind.
The DUP and Sinn Féin are down the ranks fighting for 4th. Forget the rest. Life is still better in the virtual world!