Netscape 6

[JQ Johnson]

Thomas Dowling writes:
>If a page works only on my desktop, but I'm in an airport or
>hotel room using my Palm, a designer that doesn't meet this
>criterion, for my particular needs, is clueless.

A fortiori, if I'm using my WML browser, and a designer's web site doesn't
translate well to WML using the gateway that I've chosen, shall we say
that the designer was clueless about my particular needs?

I'm very much a believer in "know your audience" and in a design
methodology that designs based on expected audience rather than directly
on standards compliance, browser compliance, correct grammar, or
appearance.  So I'd agree that IF my intended audience was Palm + Eudora
Web users then I'd need to design with them in mind.  But conversely I
might consciously decide that that's not my audience.  If my intended
audience is dominated by people who disable "tables, scripting, colors,
images, variations in font..." then perhaps I should publish all my web
pages as Content-type: text/plain (that's a nice simple standard, and
degrades well to primitive browsers).  If my intended audience is graphics
professionals (or many poets), then the CONTENT of my pages is likely to
be almost entirely things that some web page authors (including some W3C
standards writers) would describe as "mere appearance", and I'd better
attend to things like how particular browsers render my page.