Not all clients are that way and I've been able to educate them. When dealing with a local client I'll hand them my tablet with the page open in IE and say "Can you comfortably read this?" Scalable font sizes become much easier to sell.
When they respond with "well you have a high end system" I point to pages at Dell, HP, etc. that show laptops with the same resolution or the higher 1600x1200 for $1,500. Then point out that it is the sub $1,300 ones that have no option for the higher resolution screens. Which would they rather have for customers? Ask you clients if they would use the same ad on TV as they would in print. The web is neither but is closer to TV than print. Then depending on the client I'll bring I the legal issues. Do they do business with the government? Section 508 Do they sell to educational institutions? Section 504 Then there is the issue of whether or not the ADA applies since Spitzer forced large settlements out of Priceline and Ramada Inns for not complying with the ADA on their websites. Do they want to risk being a test case? As far as CSS based layout, that's not even a topic of discussion. I just do it. Very few of my clients even care how something is done as long as it meets their requirements. Though I had a RFP faxed to me yesterday that said in part under Site Specifications - Design in part: "Pages should weight no more than 75K and the interface should be designed to cache. Website must not require user plug-ins as a default Site must be built in accordance to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1., provided by the w3C and should also be as easily accessible to the novice as well as the experienced internet user" Site Specifications - Look and Feel: "The site must reflect ... of industry. Enclosed with this RFP is a package of sample marketing literature so the bidder can get a feel for our previous and current marketing collateral." This RFP is for a very large company with many Fortune 500 clients. They are fussy about branding as well but recognize that the web is not print and the criteria for judging how a website must look is not that it exactly match their print campaign but that it has an overall look and feel that blends and extends their print material. Frankly, very few of my clients will ever look at their website in anything other than their default settings so they don't realize what resizing can do. On the other hand I do have a few who will use their Pocket PC or Palm based phone to access their site. That makes the case against table based layouts if they had considered one.<g> Cheryl D. Wise Certified Professional Web Developer Microsoft FrontPage MVP http://wiserways.com http://starttoweb.com - Not too late to register for the May session Office: 713-353-0139 -----Original Message----- From: Stephen Caudill [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2005 9:26 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [wdvltalk] SCR: http://jva.caffeinegroove.com/ Cheryl D Wise wrote: > BTW, what is wrong with using either keywords or percents for the font > sizes if ems are a bit out of reach right now? Nothing at all. And it's certainly encouraged practice. I have simply had a *whole* lot of trouble trying to use any scalable unit of measurement for text within fixed width containers... And a lot of my clients are designers or people equally as fussy about their branding. They want fixed, controllable layouts. As long as they continue to pay me, they'll get what they want. This brings us to the dicey part. It's (imo) our responsibility as developers to steer them in the right direction, of course. But, I've found it to be a huge turn-off to clients to be a pedant about best practices. They really could give a shit. They just want it done and they want it done the way they envision it. Now, if their tech-savvy friend tells them that they need to have resizable fonts, they'll be inclined to listen to them, but 9 times out of 10, if it's me saying it, they just want it to look like the comp.... And if I have to nail a font-size, there's no more accurate way to do that than with px. And really, to be honest, if I have to throw my weight around about anything in the development process, I'd rather it be about going with a CSS-based layout or getting them to go with Rails for the back end :) In my experience, there's only so much leeway a client will let you have before they exert themselves, not infrequently just to have made the exertion (who's da boss? das right!) Wow. that was a rant. Sorry :) hopefully there's a nugget for conversation in there though. ____ � The WDVL Discussion List from WDVL.COM � ____ To Join wdvltalk, Send An Email To: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] or use the web interface http://e-newsletters.internet.com/discussionlists.html/ Send Your Posts To: [email protected] To change subscription settings, add a password or view the web interface: http://intm-dl.sparklist.com/read/?forum=wdvltalk ________________ http://www.wdvl.com _______________________ You are currently subscribed to wdvltalk as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe via postal mail, please contact us at: Jupitermedia Corp. Attn: Discussion List Management 475 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10016 Please include the email address which you have been contacted with.
