Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was shown around his new website, www.premier.gov.ru, Friday. The project was presented to him by an unidentified team of developers. No comments have been made about his reaction, but he does not look particularly pleased in the photo. On the other hand, perhaps he was simply annoyed by the need to use a one-button mouse, which feels foreign to most Russian PC users.
To have the new website assessed by experts, MK posted the news at http://habrahabr.ru, one of the largest IT web-communities. The post collected over 70 comments within an hour.
We also asked Yury Vasilkov, an independent web designer, to comment on the Prime Minister's web portal. The gist of his commentary echoes one of the comments posted on http://habrahabr.ru: "Websites of this level should be perfected to the utmost before release, and not after bug reports."
Flaws:
Yury Vasilkov
"This site is raw and unfinished. One sees Serif fonts in one browser, and Sans Serif fonts if opened in another, which looks better. It is a minor hitch, but affronts the eye. Podcasts don't fit in their frames, the elements aren't matched. A click on a link lands me on the government website, although I am supposed to remain on Putin's personal portal.
"As I click on the English icon, the logo becomes larger and shifts right, pushing the Russian-flag-coloured strip and other elements. The layout is rough and much of it isn't anchored to anything."
IT community comments:
"I'm using a laptop with a standard 1280x800 monitor, and I don't see how this resource can be used at all. All I see is an empty screen with a picture. Information is scarce. Flash maps are good for nothing.
"Moreover, the site's structure is extremely confusing and underdone. The content is sparse. My congratulations to the team. An apology for the website."
Advantages:
Yury Vasilkov:
"It looks rather good on the whole, but it's raw, as I said. There is a time scale concept - a good idea that also looks good. The code is OK, although it could have been more accurate and streamlined. The site is functional, nothing breaks down, but the layout looks bizarre. It would be a shame if the time scale was plagiarised. If not, good for them.
IT community comments:
"It's not bad on the whole, much better than Kremlin.ru, anyway. I mean, they must have had a real budget with no cutbacks. The content is diverse, including news, events, scanned documents, video and audio podcasts, a video blog, news subscription, a photo gallery (very technically advanced, by the way), and much more.
"The site is updated daily, weekends included, and new functions are added."
Costs:
Yury Vasilkov
"I have a strong feeling that it is made up of stolen modules that are skillfully welded together. I estimate the prime cost of this work to be between 30,000 and 40,000 roubles, unless they managed to sell it at a huge premium."
IT community comments:
"We paid nearly $85,000 for a website of a ministry-linked company - an ordinary site built in a week or two. I cannot even imagine how big the budget of the site in question might be."