Re: Designers/web developer needs

> - to help them with convincing their managers you should do that
> - to clarify classical errors/misunderstandings they have been through
> due to bad education outside for instance

As you all are surely aware, many people are still trying to practice
"traditional medium" style design on the web.  That is, many designers
are trying to have precise control over what web users end experience
will be like, and haven't really accepted that they can't have this
control.  They haven't understood that the web was not designed to solve
that problem, and that it is not really trying to.  Yet many designers
still try to battle this fact every day in their work, or they just give
up and label the site as "IE only, min 800x600".  These are the concepts
and design goals I try to convey to people when I introduce them to web
design.  I find it helpful to point people at something like
http://www.browserlist.browser.org/ to show just how many different
browsers are out there.  I try to explain how they can't be sure what
fonts will be available, even on major platforms like the Mac versus
PC.  I try to explain about the millions of people who will use set top
boxes and low resolution televisions to view their site, or devices like
Palm Pilots.

I think one idea for something that might help bring this home would be
to create an example page designed for IE on the PC desktop.  But then
have a list of browsers on different platforms like that linked above,
with a screenshot (or audio file!) of the site being displayed on each. 
Then you could label each browser with the number of people who use it,
or at least, why people would need to use that browser.  Next to a shot
of the site being mostly illegible, "This is the most popular set top
box in India/China, and in 2005 will be the primary means of internet
access for two billion people" kinda thing.  "This is a shot from the
browser Ford is placing in the dashboard of 10 million cars over the
next five years".  You could also show the same example page rewritten
to be more accessible, etc, and how it can still look good on the IE
dektop, but have shots of the drastically better results on other
platforms.

I mean...the problem is the kinda thing we all talk about in theoretical
terms...but I don't know of anywhere you can really /show/ people the
results.

-- 
Chris Hubick
mailto:chris@hubick.com
http://www.hubick.com/

Received on Tuesday, 9 July 2002 16:51:27 UTC