Franko wrote:
> I can give you a 17" if you want. Or a 600 wide window. Trouble
> with PCs is
> the appearance is different dependingon the graphics card. My home PC uses
> a Matrox Millenium and the display is very different from my work PC which
> is a ThinkPad 765 notebook sitting in a docking station. Both use 17"
> monitors so they should be much the same. But they ain't.
What do you think makes the "very different" displays happen? Could it be
because the laptop has a video card/driver built for driving a TFT screen?
> I agree. Many of the so-called designers have no idea of the true
> limitations of the web. Nor, I'm afraid, does it appear that many of the
> developers do, either. Perhaps that's why so many bad sites come out of
> interactive divisions of ad agencies - they tend to make a site look good
> on whatever equipment they're using and show it to the client
> from the hard
> drive, and don't consider the limitations of different platforms,
> let alone
> different video cards on the same platform. And so they don't optimise
> their code for the widest possible access.
I just finished reading an article in Web Techniques magazine about
"high-end" web shops. The article discussed different ways to break duties
up among staff members. One prevalent method is to have the
Photoshop/Illustrator people working with their apps and doing NO html. I
don't think that this division of labor is necessarily a bad thing. There's
no reason a good Photoshop artist couldn't understand the limitations of the
web:
- Use the browser safe palette for flat colors.
- Learn which files save better as gifs than jpgs.
- Keep your palette as small as possible for each file.
- Balance compression ratio, image quality and file size when saving jpg's.
- Pay close attention to total file size per page.
There might be a few things I missed, but that's basically the gist of it. I
think the problem comes from designers who:
- don't learn the limitations
- don't want to work within the limitations
- can't figure out how to work within the limitations
- don't care to work within the limitations (and therefore don't care about
reaching their full audience, or, possibly, the full audience of their
client)
If a designer falls into one of those categories AND they are supposed to be
answering to a Creative Director or other Site Manager, then their boss
should set the guidelines. If their boss doesn't understand and work within
the limitations, then, well, we get some of the graphics heavy, slow, but
high dollar sites that I often click away from as soon as I see all the big
images crawling onto the screen.
Now, do you really think that these high priced "ad agency" web departments
are really foolish enough to develop a slow site and roll it off to their
client by just showing it to them from their local hard drive? I dunno. I do
know that every client I've ever had has looked at their site extensively
from the comfort of their own, slow home connection.
Sure would take some brass nuggets to deliver a, let's say, $50k site to a
client and always require that they look at it from the internal T1.
So, that leaves the question: "well, how exactly do they get away with
charging $50k for a slow dog that looks mighty pretty?"
Client ignorance.
I'll bet that many high priced ad agencies are perfectly comfortably with
keeping their clients ignorant.
> It's the way this business is
> going, I'm afraid.
There's lots of businesses out there creating for the web. I've seen more
and more good sites coming out on a regular basis. I think lumping everyone
together and saying "that's were we're headed" is like going to Vegas and
saying "this is the future".
Jack
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