“How bad can Wal-Mart make its web site? …Not only is it DRM infected but it is so badly broken in Firefox I can’t see enough of it to figure out what is broken,” Charlie Demerjian reports for The Inquirer.
“This is an embarrassment of awfulness, any teacher would flunk a first time HTML student for turning in a basic assignment that looked like this, much less a real web site,” Demerjian writes.
Demerjian writes, “You have to question if it tested this at all. There is a ‘beta’ tag that you can see near the top, but even Microsoft wouldn’t dare do this in public.”
Full article, with screenshot of Wal-Mart’s jumbled mess of a site in Firefox, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “LinuxGuy and Mac Prodigal Son” for the heads up.]
Come now, Mr. Demerjian, deeming any company’s software testing as worse than Microsoft’s is hitting way below the belt. 
And Wal-Mart’s brick and mortar stores do have some merit at least: they’re excellent places to catch free freak shows at any time of the day or night.
Related article:
Wal-Mart excludes Mac and iPod users with new low-res TV show, movie download store – February 06, 2007
There will be a lot of “big box” Walmart bashing in this forum, but the topic is how badly programmed their web page is.
Tom Cruise (the new way of saying J.C.’s name in vain) that is embarrassing.
Plus, their video encoding sucks too.
Incase you are thinking of posting…piss off Zune Tang…
What’s really funny about this – I haven’t had time to try it in Firefox (Mac), but even though it’s non-functional on a Mac, the (opening) page renders just fine in Safari.
Safari displays it OK, but Camino makes the same mess out of it as Demerjian experienced.
MW: man. Man, oh man, what were they thinking?
I went to a freak show once.
Lol – even the ‘Unsupported Browser or Operating System’ box that appears in Safari when to try to buy something is off the screen and not big enough to contain the message it’s supposed to display!
Oh dear, oh dear.
Way to alienate millions of possible website viewers and Mac users there, MDN. “Freak shows”? Wow. I shop at Wal-Mart. Am I a freak, too?
Behold the bigotry of Mac users.
“but even Microsoft wouldn’t dare do this in public”
OUCH! That’s gonna leave a mark.
That could be the very best coding possible coming out of Bentonville. They probably interviewed twenty web designers and hired the lowest bidder – enough change for breakfast at Waffle House after the interview. Plus a tip.
MW: fact
So, an old movie, such as Ice Age, costs $15 but I can go into Target and get the DVD for less than that. I thought Wal-Mart was supposed to be the king of retail but it appears that they don’t even understand basic consumer economics. I have no problem with Wal-Mart but downloads should cost less, not more, than the physical DVD copy.
MDN, a lot of people — including my sister with 4 kids — shop at Wal-Mart because there prices are so low and they need to in order to make end’s meet. Consider them “freaks” huh?
Well, I have one message for you, MDN:
Goodbye.
I’ll get my Mac news elsewhere.
Works (almost) fine in Safari and Opera 8.51.
Camino looks the same mess as Firefox.
MDN,
YOU have become too arrogant.
Watch your back.
“Wow. I shop at Wal-Mart. Am I a freak, too?”
Absolutely, Chris. But it has nothing to do with your shopping habits.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”red face” style=”border:0;” /> Wait, don’t! (j/k)
Explain the late Saturday nights with live chickens and a trunkful of candles and canola oil.
– Mindless Mac Bigot and Proud of It
MDN weren’t implying that everyone who shops at wal-mart is a freak – just that there is a regular stream of freaks who do shop there.
Ok it’s not pretty but you have to understand
only 4 of our customers have computers and only 2
have highspeed until the Comcast deal expires.
The only movie they are downloading is Dukes of Hazard.
Love that Jessica!!!
Yeha chill out or I’ll drop a pallet on you.
Waltech/pop machine fillers
P.S. I occasionally shop at Wal-Mart. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was considered part of the freak show. Where else can you get 500 safety pins at three in the morning? (Um, I had a coupon.)
Come on everybody, this is Wal-Mart’s first stab at the downloadable video market. Give ’em a break.
Who doesn’t want to see Wal-Mart exclusives like “Reba” and “The Billy Ray Cyrus Christmas Special?” I applaud Wal-Mart for delivering such great content at such low prices!
If it’s one thing us Window PC fans love it’s low-cost, inexpensive, cheap products and services. That’s what makes Windows PCs so much better than your glitzy high-cost Macs. There are more Windows PCs out there, so they’re better, and they cost less, so again, they’re better. I’ll break it down for you Mac dorks: More at a lower cost.
Can’t wait to subscribe to the “Fishing with NASCAR All Stars” exclusive, and for the kids, “Strawberry Shortcake Meets the Smurfs on Mars” special. Wal-Mart has a knack for taking it up a notch. I can’t wait.
Your potential. Our passion.
Yikes! As a web designer I would never post such a site even as a beta for my client to see. In Safari, the graphics and text at the top left are mucked up: text over text and a missing image. I’ve tried clicking on the Category and Studio links. All I get is a spinning “Loading” wheel. It never stops. In FireFox and Camino it’s a disaster. I refuse to open IE.
What were they thinking? Oh, sorry, they’re weren’t!
Looks pretty good in Safari, except for the banner at the top is broken.
Note, also, that the Inquirer’s comment web page is broken in Safari.
Bozos
To War,
“So, an old movie, such as Ice Age, costs $15 but I can go into Target and get the DVD for less than that. I thought Wal-Mart was supposed to be the king of retail but it appears that they don’t even understand basic consumer economics. I have no problem with Wal-Mart but downloads should cost less, not more, than the physical DVD copy.”
Walmart is on the beginning of a long downhill slide. No one is in charge that really cares about the company and its people. When Sam died and then his son, the jackels took over. All they care about is their exectutive bonuses.
Yea, Walmart uses its size to beat price drops out of suppliers, but it used to work with them to get better prices, now it just beats them. Same with video and audio downloading. If they can get someone else to run the show, they think they get off cheap. Walmart, slowly dying mega creature. 🙁
PS, in many stores, vendors like coke etc have to stock the shelves themselves. OK, some of it makes sense cause they can monitor useage, but then the execs get into the show and it becomes about saving Walmart money and the crap starts.
Just rambling today.
N.
…”they’re excellent places to catch free freak shows at any time of the day or night.”
LOL!
You know, I thought it was just me that thought strange-looking people came out of the wood-work to shop at Wal-Mart.
So I broke down and tried (I say tried) to view it in IE. No go. It’s actually worse in the old clunker that Mac users are stuck with than in Safari. Their CSS works better in Safari. I was even unable to order a download in IE. There are no previews available. In Safari, there is a shop by category listing on the left. That doesn’t even shop up in IE. Clicking on any categories on IE doesn’t work either.
LOL! What a pile of Sh!t!
No movies in any browser and no matter if it did work, the product won’t play on the iPod. It’s like a gas station that only sells gas to Jugos! And the pumps are turned off! What a disaster. This is not a Beta; this is an OMEGA!!
Don: “MDN, a lot of people — including my sister with 4 kids — shop at Wal-Mart because there prices are so low and they need to in order to make end’s meet. Consider them “freaks” huh?”
Well, maybe if she hadn’t HAD four kids (or any) they could make ends meet w/o going to the Wal-(expletive deleted)-Mart.
“This is not a Beta; this is an OMEGA!!”
Good one!
Would that make Longhorn/Vista a Mu?
@ Chris Weinke, Are you seriously pigeon holing all Mac users because of one Mac users comments? What a small mided JACKA$$…
okay – for all those walmart shoppers who are offended by the freak comment – grow up and get a backbone. i have been to walmart twice in my life – and yes, it is a freak show. is everyone there a freak? no, but the freaks outnumber the normal ones 10 to 1. it’s the same with foodlion. i mean, tom cruise, foodlion must hire all the ugly people to work there – scary.
sure, they have low prices, and yes, they cater to the common folk in america. but i have no sympathy really. this is coming from the same group that wants to roll back tax cuts for household who make over $120K per year because they are “wealthy.” my tom cruise butt, our household makes over $165K and all we can afford is a 1300 sq. ft. townhouse with 2 bedrooms. we have 2 kids, 2 cars, we both work full time just to make ends meet. we are by no means wealthy, but the stardard of living here is so high it makes things so tom cruise tough. so you walmart shoppers, tough. i have to make ends meet also, but i do have standards.
flame away people!!!
WHOEVER coded this site needs to be sacked bloody fast!
I have seen 12year olds with better coding skills.
Jesus – this site has put web design back 10 years.
Thanks Walmart for ruining the image of web designers/developers.
Stick will selling stuff in a store and forget about online – you just havent got a clue… (hangs his head in despare)
Yeah it is sad what’s happened to Wal-Mart. Ever since Sam died, the place has just gone downhill in so many ways. Some stores are positively scary places, and that didn’t use to be so.
I think it is pretty humorous how so many think that ZT is some kind of Microsoft Zealot. This is absolutely not true. He is parodying MS Zealots. From today’s Post.
If it’s one thing us Window PC fans love it’s low-cost, inexpensive, cheap products and services. That’s what makes Windows PCs so much better than your glitzy high-cost Macs. There are more Windows PCs out there, so they’re better, and they cost less, so again, they’re better. I’ll break it down for you Mac dorks: More at a lower cost.
No one could be that dumb to believe that just because there is more of something or that it is cheaper, that makes it better. This is parody folks, pure and simple. I actually laughed pretty hard at this post. Excellent! Everytime ZT posts something, applaud his efforts rather than trying to start an argument with him. Most of the time, they are quite funny. I mean “Welcome to the Social”
This is the reason why the Sabotage ad from Apple was canceled. Most people are so dumb that they don’t get Parody.
PG
that page has 8530 lines of HTML, 6194 of them are empty !
the remaining 2336 contain 528 syntax errors !
it contains TWO doctype tags (a single tag that is supposed to be at the start of the document)
it contains 26 script tags !
a horible mess, it’s a miracle that any browser can display it at all !
one of the problems is that it pretends to be a strict HTML 4 document, it’s not at all.
another problem is that it’s generated by many jsp pages, probably written by different people (none of them good at their job)
it contains 117 comments, that should have been removed.
it’s not using a style sheet, but the style attribute, very unflexible.
it uses attributes that don’t exist, or are not supposed to be used in HTML 4 strict
at least 12 tags are not closed.
etc etc…, i have never seen such a mess.
Slightly off topic, but I have to say that the Amazon Unbox agreement with TiVo that was announced today is a very slick arrangement. I can buy TV shows and movies and save them right to my TiVo. And, the absolutely great part is that I will be able to RENT movies. I don’t want to buy most of the movies I watch. I seldom watch them a second time, so for 1/5 the price, this service will allow me to rent movies without leaving my house at any time I want with no subscription fees. I have been using iTunes, but renting movies is what will push me over to that side. I really hope Apple gets with the movie rentals.
The Wal-Mart Video Downloads page flunks both the W3C HTML and CSS Validation big time.
Yeah, ok, sure Zune Tang is funny, he’s doin a parody, yadda yadda yadda.
First couple of times it WAS funny.
But the real key to humor is timing. And a good part of timing is knowing when you’ve milked a joke till it’s all dried up.
My message to Zune Tang is this, “We get the joke, it’s funny, you’re clever, but now you are boring as hell. It’s not funny anymore, you’ve made yourself lame and stale. Move on to something else. ZT – it’s not funny anymore!”
This place is its very own freak show. You have ZT who parodies and some get it, some don’t, and some are so sophisticated that they can only take ZT’s parody style so much before they get annoyed and make themselves look like cold oatmeal in front of everybody.
Then you get the elites who think 4 children are too many and it is those people’s fault they don’t have money to throw away on frivilous and outrageously expensive crap.
And you also get the people who say they hardly ever shop at Wal-Mart because they have “standards.” Whatever.
And there are those who say they NEVER shop at that hellhole of a store, Wal-Mart, because they’re too smart and too American and not lemmings and yada yada yada.
And then there are those who are trying to stay on-topic: good for you. Keep trying. This site needs you around more. Seriously.
Whatever you people need to tell yourselves to feel good, you go ahead and say.
I’m curious what stores the ABWM (Anywhere But Wal Mart) crowd considers good enough.
MW: Mac users… elitists… Mac users… elitists… there’s a “pattern” here somewhere…
Looks like they fixed the problem. Walmart’s web site looks okay in Firefox using a windows PC <sigh>. However, the lower half of my Magic Word is missing. <lol>
works fine in safari.
I checked the home page in http://validator.w3.org/
Result –
Failed validation, 298 errors
Verry slopppyyy
Will their download service be available to their women employees?
It is great to see WalMart dive in, and we can only hope more and more do so as well…
The more big-box retailers dive into online store sales, whether implemented well, in mediocre style, or just delivered as a piss-poor solution, it is fantastic news for Apple.
The overall movie download experience will continue to get more confusing and frutstrating for consumers, further elevating the simplistic and painless iTunes solution.
In other words, the market will move forward in creating an increasing level of noise, which will elevate iTunes as the crystal clear solution (with AppleTV of course).
Apple’s iTunes platform will only get stronger with each additional entry from big-box retailers attempting to do something they have zero core competency in doing.
Big-Box retailers don’t get it:
They believe they are simply selling movies online. Nothing could be further from truth. Purchasing forms of entertainment for download online is not like selling a box of Tide.
The truth is that entertainment-for-download (music or movies) is about a software and hardware solution seamlessly integrated and easy to use anywhere, anytime.
The ability to deliver this end-to-end entertainment solution is what Apple has been molded into by Jobs, and is about as far away as Heaven is from Hell, in what any big-box store can ever hope to deliver.
We should be thanking WalMart for such a move.
Okay there MDN Freak sure – out your money where your mouth is:
I shop at Target. I also shop at LL Bean sometimes. For good quality, I shop at Nordstrom during the semi-annual sales.
For groceries, Wegmans and Harris Teater. I do go to Sam’s Club once in a while, but even there it can get “interesting.” Am I an elitist, that is subjective, but I make no apologies.
So, Tom Cruise sake, get over yourself. You seem to be the judgmental elitist right now
Yeah, companies really should pay more attention to their web pages.
Oh, hey, look here http://www.apple.com/bluetooth/
BTW, when did the home page start having just an iPhone picture on it? That was cool.
Gotta wonder if an innovative MS coder did this site for WM.
MS and WM would make the perfect couple. They really need to merge.
they fixed it !
sort of, instead of displaying rubbish, they are displaying a message saying it’s not compatible.
BUT
these IDIOTS are also dispkaying that message when u use Safari !! wich was working perfectly well !
——-
Unsupported Browser
We’re sorry …
Our website requires the browser Internet Explorer version 6 or higher. It appears that you are using Firefox, Safari, or another browser that Wal-Mart Video Downloads doesn’t currently support. Click here to get Internet Explorer for free from Microsoft.
Thank You
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