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
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