Seattle Voting Guide: Web Site Showdown - King County Council District 3

It seems that Kathy Lambert is running unopposed for the 3rd District's Council seat. Oh well, I guess I can still critique her web site on its own.

First up on the home page, I'm immediately drawn to those two, animated .gifs of the U.S. and Washington State flags. Wow! That's awesome! How did she do that? If Kathy has that much control over the pixels on my monitor, think what she can do with King County policy! Needless animation: -2

Moving on, I see Kathy adds a personal touch to the home page by signing her name, and presenting it in the form of a graphic. Too bad her web designer doesn't know how to make transparent backgrounds. Bad graphic: -1

There's a navigation frame along the top. I'll be objective here and say that, indeed, the frames do offer you a way to navigate the site. They don't make it more efficient, mind you, since the site is pretty flat and the pages aren't that long. But, what's with the yellow background? White text on black boxes on yellow background doesn't do it for me. Color: -1

And, why do I need footer navigation that's exactly like the header navigation, which is always present because of the frame? Needless duplication of framed content: -1

I wanted to post a link to just the Endorsements page here, but the site has trapped the right-click on the header navigation buttons, so I can't copy the link directly. Needless trapping of right-click: -1

The photo gallery is decent enough. But, where are the thumbnails, so save low-bandwidth connections the time it takes to load every picture? Is Kathy implying that she's not interested in modem users' vote? Lack of low-bandwidth consideration: -1

Go to any form on the site, and, without entering any content in the fields, hit Send. Hey, you get a nice thank-you from Kathy! Hey, great job not validating the form! Lack of form validation: -2

Overall, Kathy Lambert's site scores a -9. I looked for some good content to give her credit for the information she was delivering, but there's extremely little about her opinions, platform, and so on. I guess running unopposed means you don't have to really care as much. Congratulations, Kathy, your web site wins by losing!