RE: [WSG] standards-compliant designers and shoddy work poor QA
Every user smart enough to know there are non IE browsers are smart enough to know sometimes you have to switch back to IE to make the website work. Now this is not true I got caught out this weekend discovering that I needed to use IE for a media program that I assumed was just not connecting for some reason. Maybe I should have known better, but it still took a 20 minute call after about 30 minutes of failed connection attempts for me to get to the root of the problem - that I was using firefox. I'm a fairly clued up full-time web designer, and as I said I probably should have known better, but there are plenty of people who wouldn't know out there. *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] standards-compliant designers and shoddy work poor QA
On Jan 13, 2008 5:34 AM, Steve Olive [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sorry to spoil your fun Michael, but 100% of Apple Mac OS X 10.4 or better don't have IE installed at all. There are also 100% of Linux users who don't have IE installed by default. Nokia, Motorola, etc don't have IE installed on mobile devices. The Asus EeePC, the hottest selling bit of technology at the moment, does not have IE installed. IE can't be installed unless the custom-built default OS is replaced by Windows XP, which is not a simple process and unlikely to be be attempted by regular users. Can't seem to find IE installed on my iPhone, either... -- - Matthew *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] standards-compliant designers and shoddy work poor QA
Thank you for your sanity check steve! Joe On Jan 13 2008, at 05:34, Steve Olive wrote: On Sun, 13 Jan 2008 12:31:45 pm Michael Horowitz wrote: The answer is very simple. 100% of potential users of a website have IE on their computer. Michael Horowitz Your Computer Consultant http://yourcomputerconsultant.com 561-394-9079 Sorry to spoil your fun Michael, but 100% of Apple Mac OS X 10.4 or better don't have IE installed at all. There are also 100% of Linux users who don't have IE installed by default. Nokia, Motorola, etc don't have IE installed on mobile devices. The Asus EeePC, the hottest selling bit of technology at the moment, does not have IE installed. IE can't be installed unless the custom-built default OS is replaced by Windows XP, which is not a simple process and unlikely to be be attempted by regular users. Cross platform compatibility, with fluid designs, is becoming even more of a requirement as people start to use non-Microsoft products. -- Regards, Steve Bathurst Computer Solutions URL: www.bathurstcomputers.com.au e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mobile: 0407 224 251 _ ... (0) ... / / \ .. / / . ) .. V_/_ Linux Powered! Registered Linux User #355382 Registered Ubuntu User #19586 *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Joe Ortenzi [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.joiz.com *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] standards-compliant designers and shoddy work poor QA
Michael, get real You are an intelligent person ad saying something obviously inflammatory is very ignorant. Go to websidestory, searchenginewatch or perhaps look at your own Analytics stats and you will see that the statement 100% of potential users of a website have IE on their computers is just wrong. Just wrong. Stats for many of my sites, that appal to a wide commercial audience has IE at 80% or less. The rest of what you say is sensible and intelligently put, but please read your comms before sending hem as you do need a reality check on occasion. joe On Jan 13 2008, at 01:31, Michael Horowitz wrote: The answer is very simple. 100% of potential users of a website have IE on their computer. Every user smart enough to know there are non IE browsers are smart enough to know sometimes you have to switch back to IE to make the website work. The question becomes from a business perspective is the additional funds needed to train their developers to code in a compliants standard way, hire a proper qa department etc worth it. I've seen worse issues. Had someone ask me to review their new website and the first problem I found is you can't submit their contact form because the javascript is looking for a field that isn't there. Obvsiously the web design firm they hired dropped in a javascript for to check fields and was so incompetent they didn't customize it for this customer. The customer on the other hand didn't bother to check if their form submitted or go through it before paying them. Then there is the website I went to where you had to pay to read the authors short stories. Or you could enter user id test password test and enter the password protected site and read all the stories for free. Great web design firm he hired. QA has always been the area most software companies fail on. The QA guy is the mean person who tells you you screwed up. The last time I worked for someone they had a policy not to release a new version of their software when it had outstanding show stopper issues. So the CIO solved the problem by ordering QA to downgrade Show Stopper issues to a lower category of problem so he could send out the next release and sell more software to customers. Solving the actual problem was beyond them of course but if you downgraded it he solved the issue. I was not popular for suggesting this was not a good QA practice. But heck I was just the implementation specialist who had to deal with the customer when the software didn't work as promised. Shoddy work is nothing new. It will end when it impacts customers to the point it costs people business. Michael Horowitz Your Computer Consultant http://yourcomputerconsultant.com 561-394-9079 Viable Design wrote: There is blame to go around, for sure. I had an accessibility issue just this morning, while trying to find out about filing an insurance claim on my husband's car (which someone ran into in the middle of the night ... and took off). In Firefox, my browser of choice, the text on the page I needed was overlapping, and many of the links were not clickable. I switched to IE, and the page was totally fine; everything was in perfect working order. I couldn't help but check the source code, and of course, it was designed using tables. There were 187 errors, according to the W3C validation service. I e-mailed the company and received a quick reply that they had recently discovered an error that was preventing a small number of customers from accessing their claim information. Pretty generic, as expected. The company is customer-service based, according to its policies and my experience, so why would the powers that be within it not choose to make its Web site accessible to all? It's not like they don't have the money to make it happen. I propose that most people would choose not to inform them of the difficulties they have in the first place. It reminds me of the days (long ago!) when I was a waitress. Most of the customers who had a bad experience due to the food or the service (from other waitresses, of course!) wouldn't complain or explain; they'd merely pay their bills and leave, never to return, intent on informing everyone they knew about that awful restaurant. And then I think about how many times I personally have chosen to just let bad experiences go in fast-food restaurants, convenience stores, gas stations. The girl who jerked my money out of my hand with a scowl on her face and no thank-you. The guy who took five minutes to wait on me because he was too busy on his cell phone. I have gone to the manager sometimes, but most of the time, I just consider it too much hassle and let it go. The same is surely true of Internet experiences, I propose, at an exponentially greater rate of occurrence. The next page is just a click away. If it's a page that must be accessed,
Re: [WSG] standards-compliant designers
There is blame to go around, for sure. I had an accessibility issue just this morning, while trying to find out about filing an insurance claim on my husband's car (which someone ran into in the middle of the night ... and took off). In Firefox, my browser of choice, the text on the page I needed was overlapping, and many of the links were not clickable. I switched to IE, and the page was totally fine; everything was in perfect working order. I couldn't help but check the source code, and of course, it was designed using tables. There were 187 errors, according to the W3C validation service. I e-mailed the company and received a quick reply that they had recently discovered an error that was preventing a small number of customers from accessing their claim information. Pretty generic, as expected. The company is customer-service based, according to its policies and my experience, so why would the powers that be within it not choose to make its Web site accessible to all? It's not like they don't have the money to make it happen. I propose that most people would choose not to inform them of the difficulties they have in the first place. It reminds me of the days (long ago!) when I was a waitress. Most of the customers who had a bad experience due to the food or the service (from other waitresses, of course!) wouldn't complain or explain; they'd merely pay their bills and leave, never to return, intent on informing everyone they knew about that awful restaurant. And then I think about how many times I personally have chosen to just let bad experiences go in fast-food restaurants, convenience stores, gas stations. The girl who jerked my money out of my hand with a scowl on her face and no thank-you. The guy who took five minutes to wait on me because he was too busy on his cell phone. I have gone to the manager sometimes, but most of the time, I just consider it too much hassle and let it go. The same is surely true of Internet experiences, I propose, at an exponentially greater rate of occurrence. The next page is just a click away. If it's a page that must be accessed, however, as in my insurance experience this morning, it's a different story, of course. But most of the time, I personally simply leave the site and make a note of what not to do. I'm self-taught. I sorted through HTML as a sort of grief therapy when I'd lost my baby (and almost gone with him) in 1999 and was out of work for months. I began learning about CSS more than three years ago and only learned about accessibility/Web standards within the last couple of years. But I'm diligently learning as much as I can (with three kids and a full-time teaching job that invariably comes home with me most days...). I'm going to make it my personal goal to begin contacting the people who make sites that aren't accessible to let them know in what way I had difficulty using their site. Not in a lofty, condescending way, but in a I thought you may want to know way. Maybe they won't care. Maybe they'll be offended. Maybe they won't get it at all. Maybe it won't do any good. But maybe it will. Jo Hawke http://www.viabledesign.com On Jan 9, 2008 8:59 PM, Matthew Barben [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I tend to agree with Mark. IT guys in my experience tend not to be 'joiners' you work in a corporate IT department and you will quickly realise that people use terms like 'Crypt' and 'Beige' I have worked from both sides of the fence as both an indepentant but also as the main web guy within a large organisation. Yes there are situations where we have had to use external vendors to design websites purely because they have to resources to deliver quickly...and I can see how these agencies can produce very poor code and have the business owner say 'yes'. But there are also organisations where they will impose a set of design guidelines upon these firms and really put the pressure on them to deliver (especially is industries where you are an essential service and need to deliver to a wide audience of both abled and disabled people). Does it make the firm a bunch of non-compliant designers...perhaps. But I say for every poorly design website, there is someone who says 'Yes that is what I want' or 'that'll do'. Steve Green wrote: Of course I made up that 1% figure but I don't suppose it's far out. Just look at the phenomenal number of crap websites out there. There are something like 100,000 people offering web design services in the UK (10,000 in London alone) yet GAWDS membership (which is global) is only around 500 and I believe WSG membership is similar. Don't confuse volume with quantity. Lots of people do. There are a lot of crap sites out there but that doesn't mean there's 1 crap designer for every crap site. A lot of the time, the crapness has to do with the business manager who over-rules any technical considerations because he wants animated pictures of little ponies flying round the product. 1
Re: [WSG] standards-compliant designers and shoddy work poor QA
The answer is very simple. 100% of potential users of a website have IE on their computer. Every user smart enough to know there are non IE browsers are smart enough to know sometimes you have to switch back to IE to make the website work. The question becomes from a business perspective is the additional funds needed to train their developers to code in a compliants standard way, hire a proper qa department etc worth it. I've seen worse issues. Had someone ask me to review their new website and the first problem I found is you can't submit their contact form because the javascript is looking for a field that isn't there. Obvsiously the web design firm they hired dropped in a javascript for to check fields and was so incompetent they didn't customize it for this customer. The customer on the other hand didn't bother to check if their form submitted or go through it before paying them. Then there is the website I went to where you had to pay to read the authors short stories. Or you could enter user id test password test and enter the password protected site and read all the stories for free. Great web design firm he hired. QA has always been the area most software companies fail on. The QA guy is the mean person who tells you you screwed up. The last time I worked for someone they had a policy not to release a new version of their software when it had outstanding show stopper issues. So the CIO solved the problem by ordering QA to downgrade Show Stopper issues to a lower category of problem so he could send out the next release and sell more software to customers. Solving the actual problem was beyond them of course but if you downgraded it he solved the issue. I was not popular for suggesting this was not a good QA practice. But heck I was just the implementation specialist who had to deal with the customer when the software didn't work as promised. Shoddy work is nothing new. It will end when it impacts customers to the point it costs people business. Michael Horowitz Your Computer Consultant http://yourcomputerconsultant.com 561-394-9079 Viable Design wrote: There is blame to go around, for sure. I had an accessibility issue just this morning, while trying to find out about filing an insurance claim on my husband's car (which someone ran into in the middle of the night ... and took off). In Firefox, my browser of choice, the text on the page I needed was overlapping, and many of the links were not clickable. I switched to IE, and the page was totally fine; everything was in perfect working order. I couldn't help but check the source code, and of course, it was designed using tables. There were 187 errors, according to the W3C validation service. I e-mailed the company and received a quick reply that they had recently discovered an error that was preventing a small number of customers from accessing their claim information. Pretty generic, as expected. The company is customer-service based, according to its policies and my experience, so why would the powers that be within it not choose to make its Web site accessible to all? It's not like they don't have the money to make it happen. I propose that most people would choose not to inform them of the difficulties they have in the first place. It reminds me of the days (long ago!) when I was a waitress. Most of the customers who had a bad experience due to the food or the service (from other waitresses, of course!) wouldn't complain or explain; they'd merely pay their bills and leave, never to return, intent on informing everyone they knew about that awful restaurant. And then I think about how many times I personally have chosen to just let bad experiences go in fast-food restaurants, convenience stores, gas stations. The girl who jerked my money out of my hand with a scowl on her face and no thank-you. The guy who took five minutes to wait on me because he was too busy on his cell phone. I have gone to the manager sometimes, but most of the time, I just consider it too much hassle and let it go. The same is surely true of Internet experiences, I propose, at an exponentially greater rate of occurrence. The next page is just a click away. If it's a page that must be accessed, however, as in my insurance experience this morning, it's a different story, of course. But most of the time, I personally simply leave the site and make a note of what not to do. I'm self-taught. I sorted through HTML as a sort of grief therapy when I'd lost my baby (and almost gone with him) in 1999 and was out of work for months. I began learning about CSS more than three years ago and only learned about accessibility/Web standards within the last couple of years. But I'm diligently learning as much as I can (with three kids and a full-time teaching job that invariably comes home with me most days...). I'm going to make it my personal goal to begin contacting the people who
Re: [WSG] standards-compliant designers and shoddy work poor QA
On Sun, 13 Jan 2008 12:31:45 pm Michael Horowitz wrote: The answer is very simple. 100% of potential users of a website have IE on their computer. Michael Horowitz Your Computer Consultant http://yourcomputerconsultant.com 561-394-9079 Sorry to spoil your fun Michael, but 100% of Apple Mac OS X 10.4 or better don't have IE installed at all. There are also 100% of Linux users who don't have IE installed by default. Nokia, Motorola, etc don't have IE installed on mobile devices. The Asus EeePC, the hottest selling bit of technology at the moment, does not have IE installed. IE can't be installed unless the custom-built default OS is replaced by Windows XP, which is not a simple process and unlikely to be be attempted by regular users. Cross platform compatibility, with fluid designs, is becoming even more of a requirement as people start to use non-Microsoft products. -- Regards, Steve Bathurst Computer Solutions URL: www.bathurstcomputers.com.au e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mobile: 0407 224 251 _ ... (0) ... / / \ .. / / . ) .. V_/_ Linux Powered! Registered Linux User #355382 Registered Ubuntu User #19586 *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] standards-compliant designers
That's a great idea, I think i'll do that too. it's really annoying that people disregard the fact that there are other browsers out there, and make their site solely for ie6 and they don't even think about validating it... But your idea is good, to tell them about it will hopefully bring a change, especially if it gets a following and more people do it. On Jan 12, 2008 3:34 PM, Viable Design [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There is blame to go around, for sure. I had an accessibility issue just this morning, while trying to find out about filing an insurance claim on my husband's car (which someone ran into in the middle of the night ... and took off). In Firefox, my browser of choice, the text on the page I needed was overlapping, and many of the links were not clickable. I switched to IE, and the page was totally fine; everything was in perfect working order. I couldn't help but check the source code, and of course, it was designed using tables. There were 187 errors, according to the W3C validation service. I e-mailed the company and received a quick reply that they had recently discovered an error that was preventing a small number of customers from accessing their claim information. Pretty generic, as expected. The company is customer-service based, according to its policies and my experience, so why would the powers that be within it not choose to make its Web site accessible to all? It's not like they don't have the money to make it happen. I propose that most people would choose not to inform them of the difficulties they have in the first place. It reminds me of the days (long ago!) when I was a waitress. Most of the customers who had a bad experience due to the food or the service (from other waitresses, of course!) wouldn't complain or explain; they'd merely pay their bills and leave, never to return, intent on informing everyone they knew about that awful restaurant. And then I think about how many times I personally have chosen to just let bad experiences go in fast-food restaurants, convenience stores, gas stations. The girl who jerked my money out of my hand with a scowl on her face and no thank-you. The guy who took five minutes to wait on me because he was too busy on his cell phone. I have gone to the manager sometimes, but most of the time, I just consider it too much hassle and let it go. The same is surely true of Internet experiences, I propose, at an exponentially greater rate of occurrence. The next page is just a click away. If it's a page that must be accessed, however, as in my insurance experience this morning, it's a different story, of course. But most of the time, I personally simply leave the site and make a note of what not to do. I'm self-taught. I sorted through HTML as a sort of grief therapy when I'd lost my baby (and almost gone with him) in 1999 and was out of work for months. I began learning about CSS more than three years ago and only learned about accessibility/Web standards within the last couple of years. But I'm diligently learning as much as I can (with three kids and a full-time teaching job that invariably comes home with me most days...). I'm going to make it my personal goal to begin contacting the people who make sites that aren't accessible to let them know in what way I had difficulty using their site. Not in a lofty, condescending way, but in a I thought you may want to know way. Maybe they won't care. Maybe they'll be offended. Maybe they won't get it at all. Maybe it won't do any good. But maybe it will. Jo Hawke http://www.viabledesign.com On Jan 9, 2008 8:59 PM, Matthew Barben [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I tend to agree with Mark. IT guys in my experience tend not to be 'joiners' you work in a corporate IT department and you will quickly realise that people use terms like 'Crypt' and 'Beige' I have worked from both sides of the fence as both an indepentant but also as the main web guy within a large organisation. Yes there are situations where we have had to use external vendors to design websites purely because they have to resources to deliver quickly...and I can see how these agencies can produce very poor code and have the business owner say 'yes'. But there are also organisations where they will impose a set of design guidelines upon these firms and really put the pressure on them to deliver (especially is industries where you are an essential service and need to deliver to a wide audience of both abled and disabled people). Does it make the firm a bunch of non-compliant designers...perhaps. But I say for every poorly design website, there is someone who says 'Yes that is what I want' or 'that'll do'. Steve Green wrote: Of course I made up that 1% figure but I don't suppose it's far out. Just look at the phenomenal number of crap websites out there. There are something like 100,000 people offering web design services in
[WSG] standards-compliant designers
On Jan 9, 2008, at 12:58 AM, Steve Green wrote: standards-compliant designers represent perhaps 1% of the industry is this really the figure - any sources? very depressing - and doesn't help those in a similar position to mine - The Florida Library Association (of which our director was president at the time) drew up guidelines calling for standards/508 compliant library web sites. But when I put forward the suggestion that our site should adhere to the guidelines: Oh, I think people make too much of accessibility... La lutte continue! Andrew http://www.andrewmaben.net [EMAIL PROTECTED] In a well designed user interface, the user should not need instructions. *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] standards-compliant designers
On Jan 9, 2008 2:01 PM, Andrew Maben [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: standards-compliant designers represent perhaps 1% of the industry is this really the figure - any sources? It's impossible to say, unless you draw a line in the sand and define what qualifies someone to call themselves a 'web designer'. Does it have to be your job title? Your business? Do you have to be paid for it? Our industry includes everyone from Zeldman to the marketing department struggling with a CMS to back-bedroom solo web agencies to the neighbour's kid with a copy of FrontPage. -- - Matthew *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
RE: [WSG] standards-compliant designers
Of course I made up that 1% figure but I don't suppose it's far out. Just look at the phenomenal number of crap websites out there. There are something like 100,000 people offering web design services in the UK (10,000 in London alone) yet GAWDS membership (which is global) is only around 500 and I believe WSG membership is similar. Those who take standards-compliant design seriously tend to be individuals producing small volumes of work, but the large volumes are typically generated by organisations that neither know nor care about standards-compliance. They are invariably tied to enterprise-scale CMSs that guarantee the code will be horrible. Likewise, ASP.Net implementations can be made to be standards-compliant but it takes a huge amount of work so most organisations just use it as it comes out of the box. Steve _ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matthew Pennell Sent: 09 January 2008 14:12 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] standards-compliant designers On Jan 9, 2008 2:01 PM, Andrew Maben [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: standards-compliant designers represent perhaps 1% of the industry is this really the figure - any sources? It's impossible to say, unless you draw a line in the sand and define what qualifies someone to call themselves a 'web designer'. Does it have to be your job title? Your business? Do you have to be paid for it? Our industry includes everyone from Zeldman to the marketing department struggling with a CMS to back-bedroom solo web agencies to the neighbour's kid with a copy of FrontPage. -- - Matthew *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] standards-compliant designers
Steve Green wrote: Of course I made up that 1% figure but I don't suppose it's far out. Just look at the phenomenal number of crap websites out there. There are something like 100,000 people offering web design services in the UK (10,000 in London alone) yet GAWDS membership (which is global) is only around 500 and I believe WSG membership is similar. Don't confuse volume with quantity. Lots of people do. There are a lot of crap sites out there but that doesn't mean there's 1 crap designer for every crap site. A lot of the time, the crapness has to do with the business manager who over-rules any technical considerations because he wants animated pictures of little ponies flying round the product. 1 crap designer can turn out many, many crap sites. The damage done by Sieglal's Designing Killer Websites (1st edition - he recanted later) was huge. Back when I was starting, I bought it and used it as a bible of what not to do, but many used it as a how-to guide, and some of those sites still exist. Also add in the spectrum of experience from people creating websites. Some are just learning, some are doing it on the side for their schools or offices - these are not professional web designers and you shouldn't include them in your 'spurious assessment' ;-) but they are the key people to reach out to, if I could figure out how to do it. I started building web in 1996, when bandwidth was an issue (9600 was common here in New Zealand and 56K was only just arriving) and the techniques I learned were aimed at optimizing for speed and volume. Funnily enough the same principles apply to accessibility but I wasn't learning accessibility per se. I didn't join any groups although there were a few around, but I did get on several mailing lists (some of which I'm still on). Some people just aren't joiners. And I don't see participation in the WSG as joining exactly, as there are no dues, no elections and no formality - it's just a place to come and talk. There may be lots of lone coders out there, religiously adhering to standards we don't know and I can't think of a way to find out for sure. Let's make our talking places more well known and inviting, rather than the fearsome arena that many fora become, with the resident experts snarling at the clueless. (Not saying that about the WSG as it is usually quite civilized) Which is all to say don't make up statistics that others will take as gospel as they'll come back and bit us all in the arse. Those who take standards-compliant design seriously tend to be individuals producing small volumes of work, I call unproven assumption - you may be right but we just don't know. but the large volumes are typically generated by organisations that neither know nor care about standards-compliance. They are invariably tied to enterprise-scale CMSs that guarantee the code will be horrible. Likewise, ASP.Net implementations can be made to be standards-compliant but it takes a huge amount of work so most organisations just use it as it comes out of the box. So the simple answer is 'focus on those manufacturers' - yes? Get THEM to change and you won't need to bemoan those chumps who use their stuff out of the box instead of hiring us bespoke designers at our outrageous rates. Curmudgeonly, Mark Harris *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] standards-compliant designers
Mark Harris wrote: 1 crap designer can turn out many, many crap sites. The damage done by Sieglal's Designing Killer Websites (1st edition - he recanted later) was huge. Back when I was starting, I bought it and used it as a bible of what not to do, but many used it as a how-to guide, and some of those sites still exist. I find this whole argument really interesting. :) See, I think the benefits of what Siegal and his book (and lots of other stuff around the same time) far outweigh the costs. And yes, I can understand why he recanted the book, and yes it was good that he did. But, remember, the web was even more in its infancy than it is now. No one knew it would become what it is today - the book was published a year before Google started for example! One of the huge huge factors is the growth of the web was how easy it was/is for people to create web pages. I agree entirely that content is the key thing on the web, but it was the ability to do cool things visually (and otherwise) they drew a lot of people into building websites in the early days. It was just plain fun (and magic even!). And Siegal was a big part of showing people what could be done, pushing boundaries, making people excited etc. I don't think we'd be where we are today without that huge burst of creativity. And I think a part of what caused that was people not knowing any better. And none of the above is an argument against not using web standards today! Mike *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] standards-compliant designers
I tend to agree with Mark. IT guys in my experience tend not to be 'joiners' you work in a corporate IT department and you will quickly realise that people use terms like 'Crypt' and 'Beige' I have worked from both sides of the fence as both an indepentant but also as the main web guy within a large organisation. Yes there are situations where we have had to use external vendors to design websites purely because they have to resources to deliver quickly...and I can see how these agencies can produce very poor code and have the business owner say 'yes'. But there are also organisations where they will impose a set of design guidelines upon these firms and really put the pressure on them to deliver (especially is industries where you are an essential service and need to deliver to a wide audience of both abled and disabled people). Does it make the firm a bunch of non-compliant designers...perhaps. But I say for every poorly design website, there is someone who says 'Yes that is what I want' or 'that'll do'. Steve Green wrote: Of course I made up that 1% figure but I don't suppose it's far out. Just look at the phenomenal number of crap websites out there. There are something like 100,000 people offering web design services in the UK (10,000 in London alone) yet GAWDS membership (which is global) is only around 500 and I believe WSG membership is similar. Don't confuse volume with quantity. Lots of people do. There are a lot of crap sites out there but that doesn't mean there's 1 crap designer for every crap site. A lot of the time, the crapness has to do with the business manager who over-rules any technical considerations because he wants animated pictures of little ponies flying round the product. 1 crap designer can turn out many, many crap sites. The damage done by Sieglal's Designing Killer Websites (1st edition - he recanted later) was huge. Back when I was starting, I bought it and used it as a bible of what not to do, but many used it as a how-to guide, and some of those sites still exist. Also add in the spectrum of experience from people creating websites. Some are just learning, some are doing it on the side for their schools or offices - these are not professional web designers and you shouldn't include them in your 'spurious assessment' ;-) but they are the key people to reach out to, if I could figure out how to do it. I started building web in 1996, when bandwidth was an issue (9600 was common here in New Zealand and 56K was only just arriving) and the techniques I learned were aimed at optimizing for speed and volume. Funnily enough the same principles apply to accessibility but I wasn't learning accessibility per se. I didn't join any groups although there were a few around, but I did get on several mailing lists (some of which I'm still on). Some people just aren't joiners. And I don't see participation in the WSG as joining exactly, as there are no dues, no elections and no formality - it's just a place to come and talk. There may be lots of lone coders out there, religiously adhering to standards we don't know and I can't think of a way to find out for sure. Let's make our talking places more well known and inviting, rather than the fearsome arena that many fora become, with the resident experts snarling at the clueless. (Not saying that about the WSG as it is usually quite civilized) Which is all to say don't make up statistics that others will take as gospel as they'll come back and bit us all in the arse. Those who take standards-compliant design seriously tend to be individuals producing small volumes of work, I call unproven assumption - you may be right but we just don't know. but the large volumes are typically generated by organisations that neither know nor care about standards-compliance. They are invariably tied to enterprise-scale CMSs that guarantee the code will be horrible. Likewise, ASP.Net implementations can be made to be standards-compliant but it takes a huge amount of work so most organisations just use it as it comes out of the box. So the simple answer is 'focus on those manufacturers' - yes? Get THEM to change and you won't need to bemoan those chumps who use their stuff out of the box instead of hiring us bespoke designers at our outrageous rates. Curmudgeonly, Mark Harris *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
