Surgeons at cutting edge of web design

Maynooth college's web site, www.may.ie, is currently being revamped, so suffice to say that their webmail service - allowing those with an NUI Maynooth e-mail address to check their mail on-line no matter where they are - is very useful and should be retained, and that their homepage is deserving of a facelift.

NUI Galway's site www.nuigalway.ie also has a very basic homepage but the links are clear and easy to follow. The Information for Prospective Students area, one that a lot of people will use at this time of year, has good information on things such as academic terms, registration information and adult education.

In the Information for Visiting North American Students section there is an interesting breakdown on what college life costs - it would be helpful to link this from other areas of the site. The alumni area is very detailed, even to the extent of having its own credit card. Supposedly it benefits the university every time it is used. For better or worse, this is an idea bound to be copied by other colleges.

The president's welcome at DCU's website, www.dcu.ie, is available in each of the languages studied there - French, German, Irish, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. It is a very nice touch and an easy way of letting prospective students know the diversity of the college curricula. Other colleges please take note.

Another good idea is the Student Portal Page, where information about such things as exam timetables and results are customised for individuals. The Student Services section is also good, though it requires a lot of clicking to get to what you want. The Research and Related Activities area is well laid out and is a good way of finding out what the university specialises in.

The information given on individual courses on the site itself could be better, but downloads of the prospectus and information on programmes and modules are available in PDF format.

The University of Limerick's website, www.ul.ie, has a strange looking homepage in that there is a lot of blank space. It is hard to find a balance between minimalism and information overload, but UL needs to keep looking.

The information on undergraduate courses is available in PDF format, while that provided for postgraduate courses is "under development". A link titled Wealth of the Burren promised much, but delivered nothing - it was one of a succession of broken links.

Some aspects of the site, such as Campus Life, provide very good and useful information, but are spoiled by the overuse of Flash technology. Waiting for the link to click-in in these cases is boring even with a good Internet connection. One really good area, though, is the transport one. Whether it's by air, train, bus, taxi or car, it will tell you how to get to the college.

Overall, UL's site is very professional and one that takes new technology seriously. Less broken links and Flash would make it better.

The Royal College of Surgeons website, www.rcsi.ie, has the best homepage of all the college sites I've yet seen. Its photo-montage of doctors at work is both a powerful use of emotive images and a perfect explanation of just what the college does.

It is not surprising to learn that RCSI and e-learning company Intuition were awarded a prestigious international interactive media award for their surgical programme, BeST (Basic electronic Surgical Training).

The research area is more detailed than almost any other college, but, naturally enough, is of limited interest to the casual browser. Still, sites such as this are designed with prospective students in mind, so the inclusion of such research is to be welcomed.

The only fault with this site is that it sometimes will not let you back to the page you have come from. This can get very annoying, but should not be too hard to fix. Overall though, an absolute credit to RCSI.