First of all, the system only works in Internet Explorer and seems to have been designed that way. The UI is also beyond quirky and dated with heavy reliance on split frames.
This is their website
This is what you get for your million (i'm guessing) dollars.
Just check out those icons
As I said before it does not work in any browser besides Internet Explorer. I wanted to investigate why and found that on every page it loads up this seriously ancient javascript browser detection library but never really needs it because it blocks non Explorer agents on the server side.
The interesting part is that the code reads like a historical compendium of what was the web between 1999-2001. The are references to mac 68k, windows 3.1, vax, vms, irix, etc.
Here is the whole thing in a PDF ::READ PDF::
To make it worse, most of the code on that script is commented out. Then why freakin' load it on every page load! If that glaring mistake didn't catch any sort of code review, it makes me think the entire application is probably full of crap speghetti code, copy and pasted from all over the internet.
The whole system seems so rickety. Search for them I found some org has their system on the internet which is even scarier considering how sketchy the code might be if there is the likes of the script above lying around. You can see their browser detection script in action there
In the end this is why I never trust websites with big glossy pictures of people. For some reason business people seem to think they are the best image but to me they scream lipstick on a pig.
This is an interesting follow up post (e:paul,52952)
Those big glossy heads are from Madame Tussauds. You can tell by the way they look so fake. Maybe its cheap to photograph them because real people might want some hefty royalty to be splashed all over the web endorsing crappy products.
Seriously. Who makes these decisions?! The interface is SO counterintuitive, they have been forced to push it back several times because people are so confused. And look at all the time spent training ad nauseum.
What a colossal waste of time, money and energy!
Sometimes I wonder if the intention is to just bankrupt the institution with dated pieces of proprietary junk and force employees to think backwards. And as we know, some of them won't even blink before accepting all of this without a second thought because they don't know any better and/or worse, don't want to learn or open their eyes.
Proprietary/Paid is NOT the best solution. WHEN will they learn??! Its 2010. Are all of these decision makers are no doubt caught in the 70s. I look at the intranet and that's about the only thing that is modern about the WHOLE of the institute's web presence.