this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2025
40 points (97.6% liked)

Australia

4570 readers
181 users here now

A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.

Before you post:

If you're posting anything related to:

If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News

Rules

This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:

Banner Photo

Congratulations to @Tau@aussie.zone who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition

Recommended and Related Communities

Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:

Plus other communities for sport and major cities.

https://aussie.zone/communities

Moderation

Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.

Additionally, we have our instance admins: @lodion@aussie.zone and @Nath@aussie.zone

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
lodion@aussie.zone
bestusername@aussie.zone
eatham@aussie.zone
Nath@aussie.zone
40
New BoM website has rolled out (aussie.zone)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) by Tau@aussie.zone to c/australia@aussie.zone
37 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I don't like it, it's another exercise in taking a functional website and 'modernising' it by making it look like a mobile app (i.e. the make it look attractive to kindergarten kids school of design).

For my own use cases it's made it more annoying to get to the 7 day Canberra forecast, made the local radar harder to see, and I'm not noticing a link to the written ACT region forecast which I will want to look at in winter.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Seagoon_@aussie.zone 1 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

I’d say this one was pretty due.

Why is it due? What was wrong with the old one?

What does screen reader compatibility even mean? Whose screen? Mine? I use a lap top.

Who cares what the average user expects, it's up to the smart people to set the standard, not the other way around.

[–] EmilyIsTrans@aussie.zone 3 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

What was wrong with the old one?

  1. As previously mentioned, it was not mobile friendly. Phones make up most internet traffic, so you're actively making your website inaccessible to most people by not supporting that platform
  2. The old website was built on outdated technologies and was not HTTPS compatible
  3. It looked dated, and (as much as they shouldn't) people will make judgements about the quality of your service based on aesthetics. If they want to compete with other weather websites, which I think they should, they need to play the part
  4. The old website had multiple usability issues (e.g. interactive target sizes, other things I list below, ...)

What does screen reader compatibility even mean? Whose screen? Mine? I use a lap top.

Screen reader. Like for blind people. Who need the screen read out to them. Verbally. By software. Whom the government should be considering while building digital services. See previous mention about "usability issues".

Who cares what the average user expects, it’s up to the smart people to set the standard

I'm glad you consider yourself among the smart people. I haven't worked with the designers on this particular project, but like most I've worked with before I would assume they're also reasonably intelligent. They'll understand, just like I'm sure you do, that a good interface is an intuitive one. We all have mental models of how we expect software to "feel"; how it should navigate, be structured, and just behave in general. Any time you break that model, you add friction as the user has to learn how your specific app behaves. Of course, there are sometimes good reasons to do so, but I would argue that the weather, which is generally considered a basic task, is not one of them. Therefore, updating their website to match common, modern, and well reasoned design patterns to make it more accessible to new users is reasonably justified.

That said, existing users of BoM already have a mental model of the website, and by updating it they're breaking it. They're essentially privileging the experience of new users and they should be careful to ensure the redesign is actually necessary. This is a trade off of all redesigns but, considering my previously mentioned issues with the old website, and their clear effort to maintain feature parity, I would argue that that is fair in this case.