Re: User customization using a style sheet switcher and server side scripts.

Paul Davis <paul@ten-20.com> wrote:
> In my days in the sales business, we used to have the K.I.S.S. principle.

Oh, it is still around, sometimes.

> Who wants to change browser settings every 5 mins, and if you design for 
> the lowest common denominator, who knows how to?

Every 5 minutes? Something tells me you are used to a browser
with the crappiest user preference alteration methods in the
history of ... well, browsers. :) With other browsers such things
as "browser settings" are _automatic_ or two button presses.

> and why should people have/want to alter prefrences, just to see your 
> site?????

I assume you're thinking of such things as some of us use other
browsers that needs to be tweaked in order to see given content,
*because* of some developers assumptions about what people use
to surf. Given example; a site with a dynamic-only menu that has
"clever" identification functions for IE and NS. What do the rest
of us do? We need to tweak our preferences to bypass their
idiotic programming.

But then, surfing with and without pictures, switching between
author and user mode, accessibility views, turning various
viewing options on and off all the time (text-only, no JS,
turn JS pop-ups on and off, etc) happens all the time, depending
on my feelings, the sites I visit and the phase of the moon.

Jut an example there of someone who tweaks his preferences
all the time, and it isn't *always* because I have to to see
someones content.

...

> You may be
> working on state of the art hardware, but according to site stats I was 
> looking at last week I still have visitors using win95 and 
> I.E.4/netscape 3.
>
> There is a danger of falling in love with the technicalities.

Agreed; Follow the basics of the standard HTML to cater to all, and
*then* you can think of extras to annoy / please those with or
without certain features. Hopefully you don't.


Alexander
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Received on Wednesday, 5 November 2003 16:18:03 UTC