Andrei said: "Web design is still struggling with a set of standards not developed in conjunction with people in the graphic or print industries. Just a quick look through the XHTML DOM and one can see that the model is more closely related to linear content that is read like a tech manual or a book, not structured content that is not linear like a newspaper or such. The H# tag model screams this and the lack of any true way to create multiple linear flows like one would find in a newspaper is all the evidence anyone needs."
Having worked for many years in print, I truly understand this way of thinking but it's [often? usually? ... but not always] mistaken when applied to web design because it denies the multi-platform potential of a language like XML. I've come to believe that the real power of the Web is in its flexibility to transition data into multiple usable formats, including formats that are accessible to as many devices as possible. There are various limitations now inherent in many of our interpretive devices, and some of those will change when sufficient resources are committed to them. But for now, content delivery can be linear and still be guided by CSS placement and various other means to allow for satisfying and complex visual presentations that degrade gracefully to serve anything from a cellphone to a text browser or screen reader. All styling will be irrelevant for a screen reader or text browser, which will discard CSS and script and read the semantically structured linear content. We can trascend that linearity somewhat if we include an accessible menu, because simple hyperlinking allows these users to jump around the "page" or anywhere else in the same way (cognitively) as if they could see. If navigational controls are consistent and ergonomic, they'll understand how to scan in a way that is different than you and I, but comparable. The commitment to do all this has to be made before a project begins, though, and if we don't see the advantages of such a commitment we won't ever realize the benefits of it. Graphic design in print was and is physically bounded by the page size. Graphic design for the Web is both constrained and liberated by the capabilities of the iterative devices with which we access the Web -- a wide-screen monitor one day, a PDA the next. It also adds another dimension of time, which is the hardest one to harness (in my newspaper, all content is already "loaded" when it arrives). I often remind myself that my experience on a high-speed connection is very different from the experience on dialup. And many, many people still use dialup connections because they have no choice. What are we building for them? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=23821 ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
