Deccan Chronicle website is browser unfriendly !?!

[lonewolf]

Okay here is my rant against Deccan Chronicle, the #1 selling newspaper in Hyderabad. Its one of the two or three Indian news sites I visit sometimes, and whenever I visit it I come away disgusted. No, its not because of the tabloid content or lack of general content. They have a higly browser unfriendly website that caters only to IE users (and thats for those with IE6).



I use Mozilla Firefox, and am on Linux most of the time. This is the stupid message I get when I visit deccan.com

Microsoft VBScript runtime error '800a0005'

Invalid procedure call or argument: 'mid'

D:\DECCAN\HOME\./../flashnews/flashnews.asp, line 180

I even mailed the Deccan Chronicle guys a few times telling them to make their website more browser compatible. Reason is that whenever any of my non-Indian friends ask me for any news website unique to Hyderabad, I ask them to visit www.deccan.com. Well, most of my friends use Firefox, Opera or Safari browsers, and they tell me "The site is not working". And of course nobody will have the patience to reboot into Windows and open up Internet Explorer just to visit a website unless they are desperate!!



Deccan Chronicle is Hyderabad's #1 newspaper by default, because of lack of other English newspapers/news websites in Hyderabad. If any of the Deccan Chronicle employees is reading this, it would be a good idea to revamp your website and take out that irritating IE-only functionality. Hire a good web designer and try to make deccan.com at least more browser compatible if you cannot make it W3C compliant!



Alternatively, this is a good opportunity for the FullHyderabad moderator, aka Kishore, to start a news section (a daily news section, not like what you have now) and try for tie-ups with other journalists and news reporters.



~lonewolf

[The Jackal]

I personally prefer TOI because its headline's arnt about some celebrity who cheated on his wife.TOI's epaper version runs on Mozilla and there is also a pdf version.

[asli_badmash]

Deccan Internet edition sucks big time. Not just that.. the paper has weird flow of infomation. The front page always has half the news and then you have to figure out where they have stuffed the rest of the news in between the huge ads.



The second/ third page always carries the gore.. "Teenager rapes 7 year old"... " father kills son".. "son kills mother".. like we really need to know that.



For the Internet edition.. they keep changing their design and everytime they manage to screw it up more. I would like to know who is the project lead for their website. Maybe he hasnt heard of the word called "Cross platform-Cross browser Compatibilty Test".



Designing a website is an art. Something that requires a good understanding of the web, how people use it, what they expect out of a news paper website, the prevailing technologies and how to cater to all flavors of browsers and OS's. Maybe they can study http://www.nytimes.com, or http://www.timesofindia.com and take some points from them.



Best of luck Deccan, have someone QA your website before you deploy it for the world to see.

[The Crackednut]

Deccan Chronicle is user-unfriendly ... and brain-incompatible !

[lonewolf]

I personally prefer TOI because its headline's arnt about some celebrity who cheated on his wife.TOI's epaper version runs on Mozilla and there is also a pdf version.

Contentwise, TOI is a tabloid.. carries only news about who did what with whom I didn't know that there was a PDF version to it.

[lonewolf]

Deccan Internet edition sucks big time. Not just that.. the paper has weird flow of infomation. The front page always has half the news and then you have to figure out where they have stuffed the rest of the news in between the huge ads.

TOI is at least technically browser compliant, even though it has tabloid news.. Deccan Chronicle can do a lot with the user base that it has. But as you said, the flow of content is haphazard and crappy. I don't think they'll bother to make it any browser-compatible. They keep changing the design every now and then for God knows who! But they make it worse each time.



I mailed them a few times earlier, and even told them whats to be done. No reply! Maybe because they are the self-proclaimed #1. They have Microsoft tendencies To heck with them

[CtrlAltDel]

ToI is just an upmarket DC...a DC with snob value...



did anyone go thru DC's ePaper version at its website? i think its a great idea!

[lonewolf]

did anyone go thru DC's ePaper version at its website? i think its a great idea!

Is ePaper the same as the site at http://www.deccan.com ? What does it say? I'm too lazy to log into Windows and check their site.

[The Jackal]

did anyone go thru DC's ePaper version at its website? i think its a great idea!

Is ePaper the same as the site at http://www.deccan.com ? What does it say? I'm too lazy to log into Windows and check their site.

Yeah its the same.

[lonewolf]

did anyone go thru DC's ePaper version at its website? i think its a great idea!

Is ePaper the same as the site at http://www.deccan.com ? What does it say? I'm too lazy to log into Windows and check their site.

Yeah its the same.

Thanks Jackal, and that was a hyper-fast reply I went there again and got the same stupid result

[CtrlAltDel]

did anyone go thru DC's ePaper version at its website? i think its a great idea!

Is ePaper the same as the site at http://www.deccan.com ? What does it say? I'm too lazy to log into Windows and check their site.

Yeah its the same.

no, http://www.deccan.com is their main newssite. epaper can be accessed at http://demo.bodhtree.co.in/web/deccanchronicle/login.asp



there is also a link for epaper from deccan.com homepage.



epaper needs a login id. it gives a view of each page of DC as u see it in the print edition. its a gr8 concept. try it out!

[ycr007]

I personally prefer TOI because its headline's arnt about some celebrity who cheated on his wife.TOI's epaper version runs on Mozilla and there is also a pdf version.

TOI website is good but they have lots n lots of annoying popups which makes me everytime i open it in IE.So i prefer Firefox for News sites n IE for the rest.

For really niche news,i check out [url]news.google.com[/url] & http://www.ndtv.com

[lonewolf]

epaper can be accessed at http://demo.bodhtree.co.in/web/deccanchronicle/login.asp

there is also a link for epaper from deccan.com homepage.

epaper needs a login id. it gives a view of each page of DC as u see it in the print edition. its a gr8 concept. try it out!

Thanks I'll check it out. Again, look at whats below on their footer I wish more websites had a footer similar to what I have on my website instead of an elitist footer like Best viewed with IEx in kissxbutt resolution.

[Mayavi Morpheus]

I personally prefer TOI because its headline's arnt about some celebrity who cheated on his wife.TOI's epaper version runs on Mozilla and there is also a pdf version.

TOI website is good but they have lots n lots of annoying popups which makes me everytime i open it in IE.So i prefer Firefox for News sites n IE for the rest.
For really niche news,i check out [url]news.google.com[/url] & http://www.ndtv.com

TOI and good news



TOI = Toilet paper of India.



I remember reading headlines like



1. Aston something uses Viagra to satisfy Demi moore

2. Indian women are unhappy indian men in Kamasutra land

3. Extra marital affairs is in the genes

etc etc... on front page of its online edition



And yeah, yesterday I was bored and explored TOI in depth and guess what I found? TOI requested its viewers to send them stories of when and how they lost their virginity and there are more than 10 pages of replies with all the desi baba erotic stories. Great News!

[Lucifer]

Yes, it is a little annoying to find sites that are designed for IE. But, there are a few issues here. Before I get into them, let me clarify that I am not a supporter of anything Microsoft.



First, there are certain JavaScripts that only work on IE. Anyone ever composed mail on yahoo in IE and, say, Netscape or Firefox? Notice a difference there? On IE you get an html area, i.e. there are buttons and drop-down menus for formatting your mail text (bold, italics, font size, etc.). That is through a JavaScript and it only works on IE. This might be a fancy feature for a few tech savvy people but keep in mind that the majority of the junta does not know anything beyond powering up or shutting down a computer.



Second, over 85% of the world uses IE. It makes more sense to cater to these people first and make a site that would work completely with all the functionalites that one may need for this large number of people.



And, now let me once again clarify that I DO NOT support Microsoft or any of its products, but do give them credit for making something so simple that computers could enter our homes.

[lonewolf]

First, there are certain JavaScripts that only work on IE. Anyone ever composed mail on yahoo in IE and, say, Netscape or Firefox? Notice a difference there? On IE you get an html area, i.e. there are buttons and drop-down menus for formatting your mail text (bold, italics, font size, etc.). That is through a JavaScript and it only works on IE.

There are a few things to be noted here (and which may be out of scope in these discussion boards). W3C had thrown in some specifications which are to followed when someone develops a web browser. Microsoft has followed these specifications to quite an extent, and has added some of its own features (which I should say are really good). Unfortunately, most web designers use all these W3C and non-W3C compliant features indiscriminately and most of the time what you get is an IE-only website (like deccan.com). Alternatively, there are some sites out there which have Mozilla specific features like rounding of buttons (which I have on my site) but which don't show up as rounded on IE. Either the W3C includes Microsoft's home created specifications or Microsoft strictly follows the W3C specifications.

Second, over 85% of the world uses IE. It makes more sense to cater to these people first and make a site that would work completely with all the functionalites that one may need for this large number of people.

It used to be 95%, and now it is 92%. Many of these IE specific sites fail miserably on the Apple Macs. When you create a website, you take into account the user base and the types of users. If it is a news website, you have to consider that there are all kinds of visitors with all kinds of computers, OSes and web browsers reading the news. It is elitist attitude to say "Nope. You cannot view our website without IE ". Fine, if thats what the website says, they have just lost a potential regular visitor.



It makes sense to make it IE specific if the visitor base has mostly IE. But what if ebay.com or amazon.com were IE-specific? They'd lose a marginable profit.



Coming to Deccan Chronicle, look at that stupid VBScript that is called into the web browser (IE). VBScript works only on IE. These DC guys can rewrite the offending code in a dozen different ways and make it cross-browser.

[san]

I find it very annoying too. Use Saffari on Mac and damn DC still does not work! High time those guys fixed it. I like going through DC once in a while cause it's got Hyderabadi news.

[Lucifer]

A point to consider, and this has no relation to tech, is that DC does not wish its users to read on the net as they believe that they are losing circulation. That DC site is completely out of compulsion (just so that they could be in sync with the times) and out of no regard to giving the readers an alternate area to read news.

[Lucifer]

And, is the site in question deccan.com? Seems to work fine on Netscape and Firefox. So, what is the grouse?

[lonewolf]

And, is the site in question deccan.com? Seems to work fine on Netscape and Firefox. So, what is the grouse?

The darn site shows only the homepage Click on any of the links to go to any of the inner pages.

[karnasri]

DECCAN CHRONICLE IS NUMBER ONE PAPER BY DEFAULT. MOST OF THE COPIES LIE IN ALL THOSE HUNDREDS OF IRANI HOTELS ANDHAIR CUTTIGN SALLOONS AS PEOPLE ARE ONLY INTERESTED IN THE FILM PAGE. NOW ALONG WITH TOI THESE CHAS HAVE STARTED THE PAGE 3 CULTURE WHERE THEY TAKE MONEY FROM THE RICH BITCHES OF BANJARA HILLS AND JUBLIEE HILLS AND PUT THEIR PICTURES.



TODAY'S DC CARRIES PICTURES OF A HIJRA WHO IS SUPPOSED TO VE A FASHION DESIGNER. I AM SURE IF HE COMES DRESSED THAT WAY IN THE TOWN HE WILL BE STONED TO DEATH DC ENCOURAGES SUCH IDIOTS WHO HUNG AROUND THE PUBS SHOING THEIR BODIES.



THE BEST PART OF DC IS THE EDITOR I A WOMAN. SHANE SHAME

[The Jackal]

1. Aston something uses Viagra to satisfy Demi moore
2. Indian women are unhappy indian men in Kamasutra land
3. Extra marital affairs is in the genes
etc etc... on front page of its online edition

Well TOI's online edition is crappy(Too many popups and ads).

[evaro anamakudu]

anna, caps lock enduku use chestunnavey? zarra small case use cheyyaradey... sooodanike, sadavanikke manchiguntadi.

[The Jackal]

anna, caps lock enduku use chestunnavey? zarra small case use cheyyaradey... sooodanike, sadavanikke manchiguntadi.

Ekkada andariki telugu raadu.

[malakpetmasala]

anna, caps lock enduku use chestunnavey? zarra small case use cheyyaradey... sooodanike, sadavanikke manchiguntadi.

Ekkada andariki telugu raadu.

naaku vastadi.