Have you noticed that Thai web sites don't work?

[attrayant]

I have an interesting anecdote that is relevant to this thread. I managed to get my hands on a student textbook (actually, at about 200 pages it was more like a magazine but never mind that) called Civil Duties and Moral. Inside the book are numerous pictures that hot-link directly to subdirectories of various assorted web sites all over the internet. I'll save the moral discussion about hot-linking for another thread, but it's interesting that a book about morals contains so much of it.

I took photos (available at the link above) of many of the pictures in the book so that I could see how the textbook was affiliated with all of these web sites. Here's a dozen that I tried [my comments in brackets]:

webboard.mthai.com/upload_images [404/page not found but main site index is up]
www.fisho.com/love [broken link but main site index is working - very bling heavy]
www.thammasatu.net/forum/index.php?topic=1218.0 [working web forum]
http://learners.in.th/file [working site but page not found]
www.brightbbc.com/Picture/exinternetcafe.jpg [working image hotlink and site's index page looks like Times Square with all the flashing neon and sparkles]
www.oknation.net [working - appears to be a photo-blog site)
http://plaza.ladysquare.com [appears to be a shopping site that doesn't quite know how to fit itself on my standard resolution monitor]
http://www.facebook.com/pages/194221890704024 [appears to be a facebook product page long ago deleted]
http://www.google.co.th/images?q=KsSRB6sO [dead image link]
http://www.manager.co.th/daily/viewnews.aspx? [working site, appears to be current events news portal that hasn't been updated since April]
http://www2.thaitownusa.com/ [empty shell, possibly for sale]
http://www.thaifortuneteller.com/ [Blank page except for Apache server status message]
http://sinkathai.com/admin/images [empty shell, possibly for sale]

I chose these because I thought that they must be outstanding examples of web development if a textbook considered them worthy being linked to. Boy was I wrong. Of the sites that are working, their landing page is:

• object-heavy
• image-heavy (one site actually has 71 images on its landing page!)
• excessively large in general (total file size)
• script-heavy (external scripts)
• total image file size too large (some sites use images for colored backgrounds and borders, instead of using CSS techniques)
• total script size too large
• landing page too long (you shouldn't make your visitors scroll to find content on the landing page)

There are ways (such as compression, optimizing java, etc) to optimize pages to alleviate these issues, but from what I could see they did not bother with any of that. Web designers seem to think that, if a visitor to a Thai web site doesn't see what they're looking for on the landing page, they won't bother clicking any further. That's the only reason I can think of to cram so much glittery, flashing crapola as possible into a web site's landing page.

[AyG]

• landing page too long (you shouldn't make your visitors scroll to find content on the landing page)

I believe this is probably done because a substantial proportion of site visitors will be using mobile devices. It's much more convenient for them to swipe down, rather than have to click on fiddly links, so perhaps isn't a design flaw.

[wilcopops]

• landing page too long (you shouldn't make your visitors scroll to find content on the landing page)

I believe this is probably done because a substantial proportion of site visitors will be using mobile devices. It's much more convenient for them to swipe down, rather than have to click on fiddly links, so perhaps isn't a design flaw.

That IS of course a design flaw.....companies know that in many cases the majority of visitors to a web site are using their phones and to assume otherwise is just being out of touch.

[attrayant]

Web servers know if you are visiting from a mobile device, and should serve up the mobile version of the site. If the company doesn't have one, that's just another point proving the OP. I don't want my phone struggling to download a web page that's half a megabyte and has half a dozen external scripts that won't even work on my phone.

[attrayant]

[duplicate]

Edited September 19, 2014 by attrayant

[innerspace]

In a majority of cases it will be a case of pay peanuts, get monkeys. While there is talent in this country there are a lot more with minimal knowledge.

That combined with the bulk of companies wanting the cheapest possible price results in low quality sites.

I have been shocked over the years with the number of fresh graduate unexperienced students who genuinely have a government agencies website in their portfolio...verified true, normally the quality you would expect from your friends son who has never actually worked in the industry...!

Bit ues agree with the OP, there is a large number of very broken sites from companies and agencies that should know better.