On Dec 23, 2007, at 7:31 AM, Jeff Seager wrote: > 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.
If we're talking dead, passive data, then I'd agree. It's pretty easy to design something that is nothing more than glorified book on the web and do so in such a way as to make it portable to a variety of devices. But that's not what people want or where the web is going. Basically, most people seem to want 1984 all over again to get back the basics of interaction added to their web experiences. They want the web to work more like they are used to the basics of the OS that Apple made popular so many years ago. Once you get into that problem space, all bets are off on the web standards and the restriction of using of JavaScript to help you get there. > 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. Again, if all you are talking about is passive, dead data then I agree. And only barely. The single moment you want any sort of structured presentation that implies non-linear flow even though it still behaves mostly like a linear reading problem like say a newspaper -- a pretty basic standard form of communication at this point in time -- the current set of standards fall pretty hard in allowing you to design that elegantly. By the way... Facebook is not a passive, dead data model. So now what do we do? Try to make all these social networking sites read like linear books? I wish anyone luck with that. I'll be off taking advantage of what technology allows me to do for the very large majority of my audience. > 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. People need to stop using the "styling." It demeans and obfuscates what is going on. The "styling" is part of the structure in the presentation on the web. The fact that margins, padding, line- heights, etc are all designed in the "styling" prove this. To remove the "styling" is to also remove the visual structure, which is the core of the problem on the web. If all that removing the "styling" did was remove color and font face then that'd be different. But in CSS, all the structure definition also exists in the CSS, and since there's not way to define non-linear content at the markup level, designers have to use CSS to define it, putting the problem of "form and function" back in. While it's true one can restructure content using nothing but CSS, make no mistake that CSS and the "styling" is precisely where the structure for the content is currently being defined. Without the CSS, there's basically no reasonable structure to work with for a lot of content types. The markup structure is only useful for linear, non- interactive content, of which there is less and less of these days on the web. > 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. This model falls apart so quickly its of little to no use. You seem to be again referring to dead data. I don't think most people have a problem with the browser as dead, passive book model to be honest. It's when the browser is used as more than that issues and arguments arise. > 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. It has nothing to do with commitment. All the commitment in the world does you no good if the underlying technology does not solve the problem in way that can be built. One could design the best car in the world that uses no gas, but if that car can't be manufactured, then there's no point to it. It's kind of like that. > 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. The "screen" is the same problem as the page. Computer screens don't magically scale in physical for you when you demand it. The fact that The problem is again things I've hinted at and 'm not going to go into on this list because it require me to write a book on the subject. However, the resolution of the computer screen is still an order of magnitude lower than printed pages. The day the computing power and bandwidth gets there and reaches the resolution of paper, is the day the amount of scaling and "resizing" and all these other things will be dramatically tempered. > 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). Agreed. Good luck dealing with time and richer interaction when forcing yourself to follow the rules and standards designed for dead, passive, linear data models. -- Andrei Herasimchuk Principal, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. 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