Absolutely Natalie.
I also note that Felix has not stepped up to the plate to support any of his opinions with research based results despite demanding (and getting) the same from the ``designer's side'' of the debate.
Pointing to bug fixes for mozilla doesn't cut it as research. I think if someone knows how to file a bug report, then they also know how to customize their browser experience to circumvent design decisions 'imposed' on them by the nature of the medium (i.e. it has a print paradigm. viz. web pages).
Felix obviously knows how to customise his browser - he even offers tutorials for others on how to use user style sheets to override a web page design. And that's great.
However, the majority of users don't, so designers 'impose' typography rules inherited from the print world. Seems as natural as writing in sentences, forming paragraphs, and trying to spell correctly to me.
Given his penchant for sweeping generalisations I have the opinion that Felix thinks professional web designers are party-and-latt� types who base all their decisions on pure aesthetic qualities. This could not be further from the truth.
Most decisions come from a well grounded knowledge of typography inherited from print design, together with other decisions based on marketing/branding, accessibility, usability and visual communication skills.
Let's not forget that the web is an easy medium to publish to and a lot of it is made up by amateur enthusiasts. IMHO most of the really poor design on the web is created by developers because they know how to publish content but they lack the above mentioned designer skill set.
(Do your own research on that one, for example google "ASP")
Terrence Wood.
On 2004-11-19 10:58 AM, Natalie Buxton wrote:
Selectively quoting and removing the key point I made misrepresents what I said in my earlier email:
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