We have a new website!
Our new website is faster, better looking, far more accessible, and with an improved daily count viewer. And there's more to come!
With the preparations for the upcoming autumn count in full swing, we have to make sure the digital preparations are taken care of as well. The website is our main way of communicating with you throughout the season, so keeping it up to date is always a big concern. At the same time, our list of ideas for what we wished the website could be kept growing, while we were starting to hit the limits of what was possible as a volunteer organisation. Well, to that, we are proud to present the new BRC website!
To dive right in, here is what has changed:
- The website is faster, sometimes much faster. You will notice it most on a slow internet connection.
- Content is better presented. Photos, videos, text: it should all look at least a little more polished and smoother. This is especially visible in the autumn reports, which are even more of a feast for the eyes than before.
- You can finally search the whole site. Sixteen years of news, reports and more, and until now no way to look anything up. Hit the search icon in the menu and you can finally find that one update you remember reading.
- There is a dark mode. Use the toggle in the menu to switch, ideal for bedtime reading through the autumn reports. It follows whatever mode your device is set to.
- It runs on European infrastructure. We have reduced our reliance on technology from a few specific countries, and the website now runs (mostly) on European services.
- It is far more accessible. A lot has changed underneath to make the website usable for everyone, including visitors who rely on a screen reader or on navigating by keyboard. Most of you will never notice, but for those it concerns it makes all the difference.
- Speaking of keyboard navigation: you can browse with your arrow keys! Regulars on Trektellen will know you can jump between count dates with the left and right arrow keys. We liked that enough to borrow it: on our news, left and right take you to the previous or next item, and page through the archive. It works in the daily count viewer too, but more on that below.
One of the changes you do not notice as a visitor is that we can now use artificial intelligence tools to work on any aspect of the website, not just the text. Why should you care? Well, it frees up incredible opportunities for a small volunteer-run organisation like ours. All of what we do happens in our free time, in evenings and weekends, scheduled around busy jobs. This is exactly why so many of our ideas stayed on the wish list for years. Things we had always dreamed of doing, but could never find the time for, are suddenly within reach.
An improved daily count viewer
Our daily counts are the most beloved and popular part of the website. Who doesn’t love going through the daily updates?! They have always been powered by Trektellen, who host our count data and whose viewer we have always embedded directly on the website.
What we never found the time for was building something on top of it, shaped around the way you browse our three stations simultaneously. Well, that has changed now. In the new daily count viewer you can switch on the ‘Lock dates’ toggle to move all stations through the season together, so no more clicking each station into place separately. And, you can link straight to a specific day with the ‘Copy link’ button.
Once you have changed a date with your mouse, you can carry on with your keyboard: the left and right arrow keys walk that station through its counts, one day at a time. With ‘Lock dates’ switched on they move all three stations together, so you can follow the whole bottleneck day by day without touching the mouse again. A little quality of life update for our most loyal followers.
This is really only the start. We have ideas for far more exciting interactivity and far more ways of exploring the count data, which we can now finally start working towards.
Feedback welcome
The vast majority of pages have made the move already, with the exception of some older autumn reports, which still require some manual work to polish. Your old bookmarks should keep working, but it is very possible there are still issues here and there. In case you find something, please don’t hesitate to send a short email describing the ‘bug’, the browser you were using and whether you are on a mobile device. Attached screenshots are appreciated. You can send your feedback by email. Thanks!
Happy browsing!