[WEB4LIB] RE: Following standards

[Thomas Dowling]

At 03:19 PM 10/30/2002, Joyce M. Latham wrote:
>But format is a significant element of user interface, so how can you
>eliminate that from consideration?


Good interface design gives users something comprehensible, stable, and 
functional (and attractive, memorable, non-distracting, etc.).  It does not 
require that every user see the same thing, which as Michael pointed out is 
an impossible goal on the web.  It is the very unknowability of what 
happens once you send a page down the pipe that makes standards compliance 
so important.  I do not know what my users are running, but I do know the 
defining frameworks we're both [supposed to be] bounded by.

See 
<http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2000/07/21/magazine/css_anarchist.html> 
for a reminder of just how much we might not know about our pages' visual 
formatting.


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