| For the most part, the high-end programming at Duane Morris & Hecksher's site is impressive. Using Active Server Pages (ASPs, a Microsoft scripting language), the site is "programmed" (much like a software application) instead of built (as most web sites are thought of). This affords several advantages: the information resides in a database (making maintenance easier), changes to the web site can be made by changing one line of code (instead of re-coding all pages), and navigation can be made simpler as well. Of course, these benefits come at a cost: hard-to-decipher code can be difficult to tweak, and unintended consequences can result if close attention is not paid. Like we said: for the most part, the use of ASPs is to Duane Morris & Hecksher's advantage. However, we encountered some odd navigational problems - at times, hitting the "back" button resulted in jumping back as many as three or four links (we suspect this has to do with the use of section numbers in the ASP code, but we could be wrong)... this simply leads to confusion among browsers who thought they were going back one step. Content on the site is good - in some cases, it's excellent. Newsletters for most groups are on the site for at least this past summer, and in a few ("Energy Insights"), content was current for every two weeks for the past eighteen months. Attorney bios are good - but the e-mail links are a little overkill. Instead of printing the attorney's name, you must click on a link, that brings up a disclaimer, that you must say "yes" to, in which case a THIRD page will show up with the attorney's e-mail address. |