Some thoughts on Kathy's swift response on an earlier statement of
mine, took some time to ripen. Long post on technical
vs. informational perspectives on 'graceful degradation'.
"Gill, Kathy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > I find I tend to design in two columns, one about 550 pixels wide and
> > the other 250. In the wide left column all essential information is
> > presented, the right column contains 'additional goodies'. This way,
> > the design is optimized for 800x600 (which I'm assuming is the
> > resolution most people use) while those with less resolution still get
> > major bang for the buck.
> >
> I'm curious where you get this generalization -- that 800x600 is the rez "most"
>people use.
>
> GVU stats don't back it up.
Good point.
> There are lots of 640x480 monitors out there -- and *if* your stuff
> is good enough for folks to want to print offline, they're going to
> find truncated right-hand margins at anything wider than 590.
That's exactly my point. The point being that the page is deliberately
designed to contain all essential information in the 'printable'
'main' 550 pix area. *But* there's some additional goodies available
to people surfing at higher rez/screensizes.
Let me put it differently. I suppose we can agree, that we don't want
nor shouldn't design different sites for different browser types? That
is, I'm not going to build 6 versions of a site and use server side
redirects to point people at the most appropriate design for them,
only to find out I need a seventh version for people surfing on their
wristwatch.
The solution then, is the magic catchall phrase 'gracefully
degrading'. Which, to me, means something like "looks fine in MSIE7
and makes sense when speech synthesized". The big question, as
somebody pointed out, is how to operationalize this noble intent,
considering that my customer has to pay for all of this and may not be
all that interested in providing information access to blind seniors.
While adhering to HTML4 standards is a very good foundation to start
from, it doesn't do the job on its own. We have (1) a major backward
compatibilty and cross-compatibility problem and (2) people with
wildly varying information needs.
1) Compatibility problems means, style sheets won't do the trick - not
much of an installed base. Also, the widespread 'misuse' of tables to
create attractive layouts points to a deficiency in earlier HTML
standards. To use a bit of an overstatement: those CERN geeks focused
too much on text and context and underestimated the importance of
visuals and esthetics. Hence the wildgrowth in proprietary extensions
and the _yukkie_ code that comes out of MacroMedia products trying to
create some eye candy.
2) This technical nightmare draws attention away from an underlying
problem. It takes a lot of struggle to make a page present the same
information on different platforms. Important, OK. But this is a very
narrow technical implementation of cross-compatibility. When I'm
surfing mobile on a Nokia Communicator, I don't even *want* the same
information as when I'm behind my high-rez 20" workstation monitor. On
a Nokia or Lynx screen, I want bare-bones essentials. On my
workstation, I want a wide-angle high-density overview perspective.
Lots of words to come to this question: doesn't graceful degradation
*also* require a layered information model? A presentation with core
informational elements being distributed to everyone, but additional
information layers of context, explanation and diversions being
gradually made available for more demanding (high-end high-rez)
information users?
And how does this relate to the cross-compatibility issue? Maybe XML
is a great way to realize layered complexity, but it's not backwardly
compatible, or is it? How do we strike a balance?
:*CU#
--
*** Guido A.J. Stevens *** mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
*** Net Facilities Group *** tel:+31.43.3618933 ***
*** http://www.nfg.nl *** fax:+31.43.3560502 ***
PGP fingerprint E3 56 AA 30 44 EE 9E E9 CA 52 C5 B8 66 2F 77 21
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