RE: A "one size fits all" personalized web page?

On Wed, 29 Dec 1999, Scott Luebking wrote:

> The analysis that "one size fits all" means "not quite right for anyone" is
> exactly right.

But surely this is why HTML tells us to mark up our content honestly
for what it is, rather than how we hope it to be presented; and
delegates the presentation to the client agents (browsers etc.), with
or without suggestions from stylesheet(s).

>  Here's where information engineering and building architecture
> are different.  In architecture, the concept of "one size fits all"
> is more likely to succeed

I'd be inclined to say the exact opposite.  With the WWW, a reader is
presented with logical content, and they have at their disposal a
whole range of client agents to help them to present the content in
ways that are congenial to their requirements[1].

> since the needs of the various users are less likely
> to be in conflict or can be resolved.

Why then are we "normals" not supposed to use the same building
facilities as the disabled users?

>  Information engineering and HCI
> are very different than architecture.  To impose an approach from architecture
> onto information engineering and HCI and expect the same results is
> probably not reasonable.  It overlooks the many subtleties of how people
> interact with information.

In a WWW context I've come to believe that there are many, many issues
that favour the decoupling of honest content-based markup from (one or
more) specific presentation suggestions, i.e in the WWW situation via
optional stylesheet(s) (which may be actioned, or ignored in part or
whole, at the reader's discretion).  The different physical abilities
of various users are one set of issues.  The "disabling" effect of
browsing situation (to take only one example: a vehicle driver who is
rightly forbidden to examine a visual display while controlling their
vehicle) leads to similar conclusions as far as authoring is
concerned.

> Is the stance of the guidelines that "one size fits all"? 

I don't believe so, but logical content has to stand for itself. Some
kinds of content are inaccessible to some users, whether one likes it
or not.  Reducing General Relativity (which I don't comprehend, so I'm
taking this as a real example) to terms which every inhabitant of
Earth could handle, and upon which each of them could base new and
testable predictions, would be a rare talent.

[1]Which is not for a moment to say that authors could not make some
extra effort to assist accessibility to unusual browsing
situations.  But with all too many web pages today, we see that the
author has gone to considerable _extra_ effort to sabotage the
accessibility that was designed into the WWW from the start.  And then
they complain that it would be too expensive to add
accessibility.  [Expletive deleted] of course it's doubly expensive if
you start with expensive effort to make something impossible, and then
add more effort to restore what had been there in the first place.

seasons greetings to all

Received on Wednesday, 29 December 1999 19:41:49 UTC