Design and standards (was Re: Netscape 6)

[Thomas Dowling]

> 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?

Yes.  I say that as someone who does not in fact have a clue about what
supporting this entails--though I strongly suspect that valid markup and
degradable page designs are good starting points.

>
> 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.

The plain text argument is a straw man; you know that you can write a page
at the cutting edge of XHTML, using frames, inline frames, javascript,
tables and font and color settings until the cows come home, and have it
remain perfectly intelligible to people who view it in Lynx, to pick a
baseline.  If you can get your page past an HTML validator and Bobby, it's
actually harder to miss this target than to hit it.


If you can consciously eliminate Palm users from your target audience, and
do so in full knowledge of the consequences, and have an overriding reason
to do so, that's no great problem.

Part of my frustration arises from the fact that:

A) Many site designers only think they know their audiences,
which--outside of a homogeneous intranet--is less possible than they
realize;

B) The design choices that prevent me from viewing a site with Eudora Web
or Lynx, or prevent Tony Barry from viewing it with Wannabe, are often
either unnecessary or have more inclusive solutions;

C) The design choices that prevent this are not in fact made by authors
who understand the consequences of their choices; and

D) Design choices that exclude people with Palm pilots come uncomfortably
close to choices that exclude people with vision or cognitive problems,
and are too often made by authors who don't realize those consequences
either.


And if Palm users do become part of your target audience, is anyone going
to give you advance warning?


Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu