The second type feels that everyone should have the latest browser, and uses 10 pages of javascript, css, cookies, dhtml and related technologies.
The 'obvious' answer is a compromise here. Or is it? And where should the compromise be?
My personal view is that our coding should standard compliant, and if that breaks in some crappy browser (*cough* ns4.7 *cough), then too bad. If we continue to 'code down' to crappy products, the internet will still be stuck in the table hell it is now. Also my examples were mostly html vs css type things, but i feel it has relevance as to what you can use perl to do, such as the recent conversations on using session ids with and without cookies and so forth. If everyone had cookies enabled, then this would be fairly simple i would think. Comments? Opinions? (just stop down voting me already, i dont need more nodes in the 'worst nodes of the week' category)
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Re: Internet. Who should conform to who?
by mstone (Deacon) on Apr 25, 2002 at 22:40 UTC | ||
The first part is: know your audience. I just saw a version of this conversation with one of the web developers from The Economist, and his team isn't willing to push away any group that represents more than about 3% of the current audience. Their monthy page count comes to about 5-6 million, so pissing off 3% of the audience translates to roughly 175,000 angry people. Next, ask yourself how closely does technology X correlate to your customer base? So your website demands Flash, for instance. Fine. That means you're tying yourself to a subset of Macromedia's deployed base. Do you have any numbers to show that your ideal customer is almost certainly in Macromedia's deployed base and almost certainly not outside it? A sub-question of that is: what business are you really in? Are you trying to sell widgets, or do you make your money pushing Macromedia (Microsoft, Real, etc) products? If you don't get any checks from Macromedia (etc), does it make sense to turn away customers who don't use Macromedia (etc) products? The next question is: what would the user have to give up if you didn't use technology X? If the answer is "code bloat, longer downloads, higher exposure to pop-under ads, viruses, etc, and a chance to have marketing's 'message' drummed into their eyes and ears," you might not be backing a winner. The web is a pull-driven medium. It doesn't matter how much you like the site. What matters is how much the users like your site. All the corporate mandates and internal-political wrangling in the world are irrelevant when the user looks at your page. Users don't care about your agenda, they don't follow your corporate marching orders, and they don't have some yutz from department Z sitting over their shoulder saying the site must be this way. They come, they look, they leave. If you're lucky, they'll see something else to look at in the first 10 seconds or so. If not, you'll probably never see them again. With those ideas in place, the best strategy I've seen is: gentle degradation. Go ahead and add any bells and whistles you want, as long as the site remains functional at a grey-pages-and-click-the-text-link level. That way, the people who don't have technology X can still use the site, but the people who do have technology X can appreciate the extra work you've put in. | [reply] | |
Re: Internet. Whom should conform to whom?
by thraxil (Prior) on Apr 25, 2002 at 22:15 UTC | ||
the only real good answer to this is to look at the stats for your particular site. if 60% of your audience is browsing with Mosaic 1.0 on VMS, you should probably code your stuff to work with that browser (ie, no css or http 1.1). ignore the stats people toss around about IE being used by such a huge percentage of the population that you can safely ignore other browsers. most likely those stats were collected by other sites. read your own logs and ignore everyone else. eg, on my site, a good 30% or so of the visitors are using mozilla, way higher than what most other people report seeing. either way, there's almost no reason not to code to standards. if you keep your markup as logical as possible, keeping all the styling in the stylesheet, and use the @import trick, you can make html+css degrade gracefully in almost every browser. IE5+, mozilla, opera, and any future standards compliant browser can get a nice looking site. NN4 can get a default stylesheet with maybe some very basic color and text styling but no positioning. browsers that don't support CSS get nice lynx-like layouts. complex table-hacked layouts are the first ones to break anytime a new browser or browser version comes out. so in general, to bring this back away from webdesign and more on topic, you should code to the standards as much as possible but don't ignore what your users are actually using. if you write code that won't work on the target system, even if it's really the target system's fault for not being compliant with some standard, you're going to get burned. and ignore all statistics that aren't directly gathered from your own userbase. | [reply] | |
by chaoticset (Chaplain) on Apr 27, 2002 at 12:44 UTC | ||
the only real good answer to this is to look at the stats for your particular site. if 60% of your audience is browsing with Mosaic 1.0 on VMS, you should probably code your stuff to work with that browser (ie, no css or http 1.1).
But how many people are willing to slog through a site that's virtually unreadable on their browser in the first place, to show you who is at your site and who isn't? What do you do if you're building from scratch?
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Re: Internet. Who should conform to who?
by ignatz (Vicar) on Apr 26, 2002 at 00:37 UTC | ||
Building inclusive websites is a little extra work, but it's well worth it. Here are my rules (with grateful thanks to my hero Jacob Nielsen). ()-() \"/ `p.s. IMNSHO, This is a very OT question better suited for a web design list. | [reply] | |
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Re: Internet. Who should conform to who?
by grep (Monsignor) on Apr 25, 2002 at 22:08 UTC | ||
This is really a question of audience (or client). If I was creating a site for unix users I would look at different set features to focus on (i.e. no frames for lynx, no plugins like flash,...) than if I was creating a site for an advertising firm. If you want a broad base, but still be able to do cool things like flash, streaming media, frames and (insert current industry buzzword here) you can always use HTTP::BrowserDetect. The capabilities (or ability to use load plugins) of browsers is easily researched. grep
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Re: Internet. Who should conform to who?
by AidanLee (Chaplain) on Apr 26, 2002 at 13:23 UTC | ||
There is a comprimise. But it may change the way you think about designing sites as well as coding them. It is quite possible to use a subset of most of the "new" technologies that either: It is first important to note that "coding for the latest browsers" does not mean that you have to use 10 pages of javascript,css and the like. Honestly the first step to coding to modern standards won't affect older browsers' ability to render your page one iota. That is using XHTML (either 1.0 or 1.1). You can go so far as to use the strictest version of XHTML, and the older browsers will still render it fine. This would be an example of the first point above: a technology that works in all browsers. A second example of number one is a technology that works "in some fashion or other" in all browsers. I will caveat and mention that I mean all 4.* and higher browsers, but I can explain how it will do no damage to earlier browsers that do not support it. What I am referring to is a subset of CSS. All 4th gen and higher browsers support some subset of CSS -- wether they agree on how to render it is another matter. But this brings me to my next point. If you're coding for a large audience that uses such a wide variety of browsers, you should stop caring if your site looks 100% the same in every browser. It won't happen. Not in any practical way. And trying for 100% similarity becomes a maintinence nightmare. If one small change needs to be made to a page, you then have to re-check in every browser -- and probably make small changes for every browser's sake. So if you take the plunge and commit to the philosophy that it's "ok" to have your sites look a bit different from browser to browser, there are a couple steps you can take to make your transition a success: I'm sure everyone will weigh in on the subject of javascript, but I'll just throw in my opinion on the matter. If you use javascript, make it so it is a convenience to those who have it, but not an inconvenience to those who don't. The subset of compatible javascript between browsers is so small that in 98% of situations where you could use javascript, you probably shouldn't. And there is never a place where you can't get by without it. So you can code to modern web standards without throwing out older browsers. You may not get to use all the toys in your toolbox, but it does not mean that you need to wallow in 5000 nested tables. | [reply] | |
Re: Internet. Who should conform to who?
by clintp (Curate) on Apr 26, 2002 at 17:02 UTC | ||
1.2.2 Robustness Principle | [reply] | |
Re: Internet. Who should conform to who?
by pdcawley (Hermit) on Apr 26, 2002 at 05:44 UTC | ||
If your customer wants table hell, then that is what you give him. Of course, you do everything in your power to make it so that someone else gets to worry about laying out the table hell (template toolkit is your friend here...), and if you're that way inclined you try and convince him that he's making a mistake. But if you don't deliver what you are asked for then you are falling down on the job big time. If you are the customer then do what you think is right. But if you don't look at what you're users are doing be prepared for pissed off users. Oh yes, I voted your node down I'm afraid. The Web is not The Internet. The Internet is not The Web. | [reply] | |
Re: Internet. Who should conform to who?
by jepri (Parson) on Apr 26, 2002 at 03:20 UTC | ||
To paraphrase your example, you can choose a toolkit that looks like arse (*cough* Tk *cough*) or go for something that looks lovely but only works on Linux.. Or you could pick something like WxWindows and go insane. In this case, no compromise is possible. ____________________ | [reply] | |
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Re: Internet. Who should conform to who?
by JPaul (Hermit) on Apr 26, 2002 at 18:10 UTC | ||
Take for example, the PC.
Computers have not, until recently, been built for "Do this and upgrade every six weeks" (Todays big exception is graphics cards and hard drives, but you get my point).
Now does this mean that new technologies shouldn't be pursued? Of course not. I like to see pictures when HTTP'ing - of course, Flash completely blows goats on my 233mHz K6, but my perfectly adequate NetScape 4.79 renders 95% of pages JUST FINE thank you. So that, in my half-page nutshell, is my opinion on redesigning the web so the poor suckers like myself can't use it.
JP, | [reply] | |
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