[Animats]

OK, now that it's back up, let's take a look at the examples. There's a "register to vote" page, but that's trivial. Here's a more difficult one - a mockup of a Veterans Administration form.[1] This is clearly for use by a Government employee, not the public.

(The first question one asks is, if an appeal is "certified", why does it also have to be "activated" by a human before anything happens? But that's the organization's problem, not web design.)

It's a high-contrast layout, to support the visually impaired. Although it does have both white on black and black on white buttons, visually it seems OK.

The form has a pull-down for "Confirm type action". This isn't a "Confirm" button, it's a selection option, for selecting the type of bureaucratic action. There are several documents mentioned, "Form 8", "Form 9", etc. These are in bold sans-serif blue text. The "NOD" document is apparently missing, so you couldn't view it, but the text for it is the same as for the documents you can view. At the end of each line is the word "Change", in the same font and color. It's not clear if "Form 8" is clickable, leading to a view of the form. "Change" is presumably clickable, and ought to lead to a popup. It's not clear whether changes commit immediately, or when the final buttons at the bottom ("Reassign" or "Activate Appeal") are clicked.

The "POA" heading is misaligned. You can tell they used table-less design - things don't line up right.

This form is useful only if the user has paper materials on hand against which they are checking. Functionally, this form is exactly equivalent to something on a green-screen IBM 3270 terminal from 30 years ago, which may be what it is emulating.

This is their example of good Government web design.

[1] https://playbook.cio.gov/designstandards/assets-styleguide/i...

[benaiah]

> The "POA" heading is misaligned. You can tell they used table-less design - things don't line up right.

Um, that's not the case. Those look like table tags, as they should be (it's a table). The only problem is that that column header is left-aligned, not right-aligned like the rows are.

Most of your complaints are bullshit, frankly, and the rest are about interaction design/UX, not visual design, which is all that this project claimed to be. The visual design and layout look fine, with the exception of that misaligned column heading (the horror!).

[tptacek]

This would have been a great comment without the word "bullshit", which made the whole thing read needlessly venomous.

[benaiah]

Re-reading this a couple hours later, I agree. I responded to needless negativity with more needless negativity. Guess my IRC habits have been leaking into my other hobbies. I'd edit it, but it's been too long since it was posted.

[tptacek]

I'm sure I bring that habit here way way more than you do! Thanks for being cool about it.

[philliphaydon]

There's no need to apologise for using the word bullshit. It's bullshit that we have to be PC about words we use.

[tptacek]

This is nothing to do with political correctness. The word "bullshit" is perfectly fine; it's the way it was used here.

[gopowerranger]

Maybe he's calling a spade a spade but, if so, your comment is off base, too.

[Animats]

The misaligned comment head is over a blank space, and to the left of a column that doesn't have a head. So the "clean" web design results in a column head that's not associated with a column.

Interaction design is what it's all about. This page would work equally well with the browser's default fonts and colors.

[tcdent]

You're probably better off submitting an issue on GitHub than dropping a bug report here.