New Ilford website

[Henry Ambrose]

Ilford has a nice new website:

http://www.ilfordphoto.com/

[Frank Petronio]

A dumb question on my part, as I wasn't paying attention during their reorg, but how come I am looking at a box of Ilford Inkjet Paper but their is no mention of inkjet on there website?

[Ole Tjugen]

The new website is for Harman Technology, which owns Ilford's "silver-based" photographic product line. Inkjet paper is made by a different company.

[Arne Croell]

Ole is right. There are now "Ilford Photo" in the UK, making traditional B/W materials and owned by Harman Technologies, and "Ilford" in Switzerland, now owned by Oji Paper, which makes Inkjet materials (as well as Ilfochrome). The latter web site is here: www.ilford.com/html/us_english/homeng.html

[Marko]

It's pretty but it's half-baked.

Finding info on specific products is needlesly convoluted. Old site was way better.

Visitors with any kind of hand-wrist coordination disability, such as arthritis for example, will find it very hard to navigate.

Visitors with JavaScript disabled will find it impossible to navigate.

Facts and details in general got pushed back, while marketing fluff abound. What's up with them, they're acting like a fresh startup. Why? They're almost the only one of the B&W Bigs left standing, people who visit their site already know about them, they needn't be gimmicked into it.

I hope this trend does not extend into their films.

[Ralph Barker]

I believe the ilford.com site is still hosted and operated by the English Ilford operation owned by Harman Technologies, but it shows both the Harman-owned B&W products and the Oji-owned inkjet and Ilfochrome products. Presumably, this is being done as part of the terms of the respective purchase contracts.

The new ilfordphoto.com site, while sort of pre-announced by the Ilford (Harman) person who is active on APUG, is likely a work in progress, as I don't believe they have formally announced the launch of the site. Thus, I suspect there are still plenty of bugs to be worked out on the site. They don't have a big marketing budget, though, so they are probably doing the best they can with the resources they have to allocate to this sort of thing.

[Marko]

I definitely hope they're not done with it.

The visual concept is conservatively beautiful and it fits them perfectly. It would be a real pitty to have that impression ruined by a sub-standard architecture and interface. What's even more intriguing, though, is that they have a lean, semantically valid structure, but goofed on the interface and data organization. It usually happens the other way around.

If they have someone read boards like this, which in their line of business could really be a smart thing to do, I would suggest they make product data and specs more organized and easier to get to and interface simpler but more efficient.

[Oren Grad]

Marko, there has already been a flood of comments on APUG about problems with the new site, and Simon Galley of Harman Technology has already acknowledged these and said he'd share with the website team.

Posting gripes here is fine, but why not also communicate them directly to the Harman folks? Looks like you have enough knowledge about website programming that you could give some very concrete and useful feedback, well beyond a vague "I like" or "I don't like".

No, I don't have any business connection with them, but I would like to see them survive, and they seem to be making a serious effort to listen and be responsive.

[Marko]

Posting gripes here is fine, but why not also communicate them directly to the Harman folks?

No, I don't have any business connection with them, but I would like to see them survive

Same here. Ilford has always been my favourite b&w brand.

I posted my comments here because I just learned about their new site this morning on this forum. I don't frequent APUG, since I am definitely not an analog-first type of person. But I'll definitely go and check the discussion you mention.

Thanks,

[Oren Grad]

Thanks, Marko...

I don't frequent APUG

Sorry about that, I should have posted a link. Here it is:

www.apug.org/forums/showthread.php?t=24886