[WSG] USERS - was [Why is u deprecated?]

2008-03-31 Thread Designer

Keryx Web wrote:



Underlines on paper have no usability impact, since you cant click on 
it! Underlines on web pages have a usability impact, since people think 
they are clickable links.


Just out of interest, I did a site map recently and all the links were 
red and underlined, at least on hover. The client moaned and didn't like 
the red or the underline. I explained that it was 'standard convention 
for links'. The response was oh, I didn't realise that!.  Thing is, 
this person and her current staff of three have been using a PC since 
1998. No one else knew either.  So I did a simple test on all of them. 
NO-one (that's big fat zero) knew what the 'back-button' was . . .


This is what I find time and time again. Contrary to some of the 
comments l hear on this list, my experience is such that most computer 
users haven't got the first clue about how to use their machines, even 
after ten years . . .


I wish we had real information on this, because it has a direct bearing 
on whether we should be holding users hands whilst designing a site, or 
assuming (wrongly) that users have 'choices'.  (open in a new tab?  you 
must be joking!!)


Bob
www.gwelanmor-internet.co.uk








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Re: [WSG] USERS - was [Why is u deprecated?]

2008-03-31 Thread Matthew Pennell
On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 10:02 AM, Designer 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 This is what I find time and time again. Contrary to some of the
 comments l hear on this list, my experience is such that most computer
 users haven't got the first clue about how to use their machines, even
 after ten years . . .


I'd agree with this - I once explained to a client over the phone how to
copy and paste; he was amazed at how much time he would now be able to save
transferring his product details into the CMS...

-- 

- Matthew


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Re: [WSG] USERS - was [Why is u deprecated?]

2008-03-31 Thread Patrick H. Lauke
Of course, this all also depends on the target audience of your site.  
If it's something aimed at the middle-/upper-class 11-16 market, for  
instance, you can start to assume a higher IT literacy level.


As with anything, absolutely everything is relative :)

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke
__
re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively
[latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.]
www.splintered.co.uk | www.photographia.co.uk
http://redux.deviantart.com
__
Co-lead, Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force
http://webstandards.org/
__
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http://streetteam.webstandards.org/
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Re: [WSG] USERS - was [Why is u deprecated?]

2008-03-31 Thread Roberto Castaldo
Hi all

Patrick: 
Of course, this all also depends on the target audience of your site.  

Roberto:
Completely agree on that. 

Users are different, their habits are different, their needs are different. 

As an IT teacher, I am used to face 14-20 yo guys, and for most of them
underlined text is equivalent to hyperlink, as most of them use the Web
instead of old fashioned books (Web Generation... Sic!).

But two years ago I spoke to ad old fashioned audience, made of Italian
literature teachers (average age was 45 or maybe more), and I asked them:
If you look at an underlined text, what is your very first idea about it?,
and they ALL answered: That's a really important text!!!

So, as you said, absolutely everything is relative.

But our challenge (for all of us who make the Web) is to find out and
apply rules which can be useful for the largest majority of users, and we
must do it for the Web, not for other media; any Web user should be (or
become) used to reasonable Web conventions, not to books ones, problems may
occur when conventions coming from different media are scrumbled without any
kind of criterion or common sense. 

That's my opinion is that underlined text CAN generate misunderstanding, and
misunderstanding with Web sites navigation should be avoided at all. So I
simply avoid underlined text, and use bold or some other typographic effect
(font size/design + color) instead.

My best regards,

Roberto Castaldo


---

Roberto Castaldo
---
IWA Italy Education and Outreach Manager
www.Webaccessibile.Org coordinator
W3C WAI WCAG ed EO WGs Member
IWA Italy Web Skills WG Member
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Messenger: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Skype: robertocastaldo64
Cell: +393483700161
--- 








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Re: [WSG] USERS - was [Why is u deprecated?]

2008-03-31 Thread Patrick H. Lauke

Quoting Roberto Castaldo [EMAIL PROTECTED]:


But our challenge (for all of us who make the Web) is to find out and
apply rules which can be useful for the largest majority of users, and we
must do it for the Web, not for other media; any Web user should be (or
become) used to reasonable Web conventions, not to books ones, problems may
occur when conventions coming from different media are scrumbled without any
kind of criterion or common sense.

That's my opinion is that underlined text CAN generate misunderstanding, and
misunderstanding with Web sites navigation should be avoided at all. So I
simply avoid underlined text, and use bold or some other typographic effect
(font size/design + color) instead.


Oh, assolutamente. I wasn't advocating use of underline itself for  
older audiences - I was actually thinking about the opposite  
situation: times when you *can* drop the underline, if the context  
makes it clear enough that something is a link (e.g. left-hand  
navigation bars).


P
--
Patrick H. Lauke
__
re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively
[latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.]
www.splintered.co.uk | www.photographia.co.uk
http://redux.deviantart.com
__
Co-lead, Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force
http://webstandards.org/
__
Take it to the streets ... join the WaSP Street Team
http://streetteam.webstandards.org/
__



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Re: [WSG] USERS - was [Why is u deprecated?]

2008-03-31 Thread Michael Horowitz
I find most do.  I think there is a wide disparity depending on who you 
work with.  Over time we are going to move to a much more educated group 
of users.  Students coming out of college now are highly computer 
literate and web savvy.  The next generation of users growing up using 
myspace and linked in are not going to have problems using the back 
button.  And they will be used to seeing various different types of 
links actually used rather than what we say they should be.  On the 
other and the current older generation which makes up a lot of senior 
managements 50+ age group may be the group you are discussing.   One 
group has never known a world without the web and sees it an an integral 
part of their generations social identity while the other group first 
started to use it as needed for business.


Michael Horowitz
Your Computer Consultant
http://yourcomputerconsultant.com
561-394-9079



Designer wrote:

Keryx Web wrote:



Underlines on paper have no usability impact, since you cant click on 
it! Underlines on web pages have a usability impact, since people 
think they are clickable links.


Just out of interest, I did a site map recently and all the links were 
red and underlined, at least on hover. The client moaned and didn't 
like the red or the underline. I explained that it was 'standard 
convention for links'. The response was oh, I didn't realise that!.  
Thing is, this person and her current staff of three have been using a 
PC since 1998. No one else knew either.  So I did a simple test on all 
of them. NO-one (that's big fat zero) knew what the 'back-button' was 
. . .


This is what I find time and time again. Contrary to some of the 
comments l hear on this list, my experience is such that most computer 
users haven't got the first clue about how to use their machines, even 
after ten years . . .


I wish we had real information on this, because it has a direct 
bearing on whether we should be holding users hands whilst designing a 
site, or assuming (wrongly) that users have 'choices'.  (open in a new 
tab?  you must be joking!!)


Bob
www.gwelanmor-internet.co.uk








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Re: [WSG] USERS - was [Why is u deprecated?]

2008-03-31 Thread Andrew Maben

On Mar 31, 2008, at 7:04 AM, Roberto Castaldo wrote:

If you look at an underlined text, what is your very first idea  
about it?,

and they ALL answered: That's a really important text!!!


Strictly in the context of text, underlined text is a typographical  
relative of the double-space following a period: a throwback to the  
typewriter age...


From Wikipedia:

An underline is one or more horizontal lines immediately below a  
portion of writing. Single, and occasionally double, underlining  
was originally used in hand-written or typewritten documents to  
emphasise text. In a manuscript to be typeset, various forms of  
underlining were conventionally used to indicate that text  
should be set in a special typeface such as italics to show  
emphasis, part of a procedure known as markup. With the advent  
of word processing, different typefaces can be used in the  
manuscript directly, so that underlining is no longer needed for  
markup; but underlining is sometimes used in documents in its  
own right.
Underlines are sometimes used as a diacritic, to indicate that a  
letter has a different pronunciation to its non-underlined form.


So underlines, in the content of text, serve as a substitute for, or  
indicator of, emphasis that should more properly be provided by  
italic (or bold).


Is there a browser that supports u but not em, strong, i, b?

The one use that I can imagine would be if attempting to reproduce a  
typewritten document in its original format.


Andrew







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Re: [WSG] USERS - was [Why is u deprecated?]

2008-03-31 Thread Stuart Foulstone


While yet another 50+ age group, who invented the Internet and the World
Wide Web, continue to set the standards which stop it descending into
chaos.



On Mon, March 31, 2008 3:39 pm, Michael Horowitz wrote:
 I find most do.  I think there is a wide disparity depending on who you
 work with.  Over time we are going to move to a much more educated group
 of users.  Students coming out of college now are highly computer
 literate and web savvy.  The next generation of users growing up using
 myspace and linked in are not going to have problems using the back
 button.  And they will be used to seeing various different types of
 links actually used rather than what we say they should be.  On the
 other and the current older generation which makes up a lot of senior
 managements 50+ age group may be the group you are discussing.   One
 group has never known a world without the web and sees it an an integral
 part of their generations social identity while the other group first
 started to use it as needed for business.

 Michael Horowitz
 Your Computer Consultant
 http://yourcomputerconsultant.com
 561-394-9079



 Designer wrote:
 Keryx Web wrote:


 Underlines on paper have no usability impact, since you cant click on
 it! Underlines on web pages have a usability impact, since people
 think they are clickable links.

 Just out of interest, I did a site map recently and all the links were
 red and underlined, at least on hover. The client moaned and didn't
 like the red or the underline. I explained that it was 'standard
 convention for links'. The response was oh, I didn't realise that!.
 Thing is, this person and her current staff of three have been using a
 PC since 1998. No one else knew either.  So I did a simple test on all
 of them. NO-one (that's big fat zero) knew what the 'back-button' was
 . . .

 This is what I find time and time again. Contrary to some of the
 comments l hear on this list, my experience is such that most computer
 users haven't got the first clue about how to use their machines, even
 after ten years . . .

 I wish we had real information on this, because it has a direct
 bearing on whether we should be holding users hands whilst designing a
 site, or assuming (wrongly) that users have 'choices'.  (open in a new
 tab?  you must be joking!!)

 Bob
 www.gwelanmor-internet.co.uk








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Standards slipping (was RE: [WSG] USERS - was [Why is u deprecated?]

2008-03-31 Thread Andrew Boyd
Stuart,

I would have to add ..and watch those standards disregarded by popular Open 
Source and commercial applications.

For an interesting tale of standards and Standards slipping, please see 
http://realtech.burningbird.net/semweb/wordpress-25-releases/ - the comment 
discussion taking place is quite informative.

Cheers, Andrew

Andrew Boyd
Consultant
SMS Management  Technology

M 0413 048 542
T +61 2 6279 7100
F +61 2 6279 7101
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
About SMS: Ground Floor, 8 Brindabella Circuit, CANBERRA AIRPORT  ACT  2609  
www.smsmt.com
SMS Management  Technology (SMS) [ASX:SMX] is Australia's largest, publicly 
listed Management Services company. We solve complex problems and transform 
business through Consulting, People and Technology

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Stuart Foulstone [EMAIL 
PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, 1 April 2008 2:26 AM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] USERS - was [Why is u deprecated?]

While yet another 50+ age group, who invented the Internet and the World
Wide Web, continue to set the standards which stop it descending into
chaos.





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Re: Standards slipping (was RE: [WSG] USERS - was [Why is u deprecated?]

2008-03-31 Thread James Ellis
Hi

I read through that post and the available comments and I'd say it's a bit 
pedantic of the author to go on about a subset of an application and link 
that to the end of XHTML and worse. Especially one that seems to be third 
party and incorporated into WP. The author also confuses the functions of 
getting your data from a source (the application) and sending it to a 
browser/device (the output method). The two are distinct (although sometimes 
the lines blur).

Writing web applications is a process of gradual improvement rather than spot 
on standards the first time (although that may happen from time to time). 
Remember also that standards are a stepping stone to building web 
applications - not the be-all and end-all. Nobody kills kittens when a 
validation error occurs, nobody should, least of all your favourite deity.

Implementing a feature that will bring in greater market share, more users and 
therefore more revenue has to be considered along with any improvement 
process involving incorporation of standards. If you add a feature that 
brings in a few thousand users while not initially supporting the standards 
then you have more revenue to improve that feature to satisfy the outliers 
that demand full compliance. It would, of course, be even better to implement 
a feature that incorporates the accepted standard from the start - but the 
world doesn't always work that way.

Take the Gallery option talked about in this link - if the author(s) of it 
cannot provide a standards compliant option within the launch timeframe of 
any app that includes it - and the app is not relying on it for core 
functions then the app is going to be launched, with a X.x point release 
probably bringing the gallery up to speed.

With open source applications especially there is a process for reporting and 
fixing bugs that often proves cumbersome to some - and chiding the app's 
developers does nothing to assist in fixing the issues (in fact it may 
produce the opposite effect).

Finally, focusing back on WP, it does what it does well - providing free 
publishing to a huge audience in a semi-standards compliant way. If you step 
back, it can be seen as a glorified way of saving content with a wp unified 
way of rendering that data. And I guess that's my point - it can save your 
content but you can use any codebase (not just the WP software) to access the 
database and visualise your data in any way you see fit (even XHTML1 strict).
And that's really true for any application that uses any type of data storage 
medium.


Cheers
James


On Tue, 1 Apr 2008 11:44:06 am Andrew Boyd wrote:
 Stuart,

 I would have to add ..and watch those standards disregarded by popular
 Open Source and commercial applications.

 For an interesting tale of standards and Standards slipping, please see
 http://realtech.burningbird.net/semweb/wordpress-25-releases/ - the comment
 discussion taking place is quite informative.

 Cheers, Andrew

 Andrew Boyd
 Consultant
 SMS Management  Technology

 M 0413 048 542
 T +61 2 6279 7100
 F +61 2 6279 7101
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 About SMS: Ground Floor, 8 Brindabella Circuit, CANBERRA AIRPORT  ACT  2609
  www.smsmt.com SMS Management  Technology (SMS) [ASX:SMX] is Australia's
 largest, publicly listed Management Services company. We solve complex
 problems and transform business through Consulting, People and Technology
 


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