Re: Three design-related (HTML or CSS) elements for your consideration

Hi,

----- Original Message -----
From: "Philip TAYLOR [PC336/H-XP]" <P.Taylor@Rhul.Ac.Uk>


>
> Dear Rob -- How lucky you are to have perfect vision,
> highly developed aesthetic sensibilities, and a dedicated
> T3 link.  But from your privileged position, try to
> dedicate just a little time to considering the plight
> of those who have none of these, yet /still/ need to
> be able to comprehend (I won't say "appreciate") the
> pages which you create.  If you can do this, you may
> begin to see that appearance and aesthetics /aren't/
> the be-all and end-all of web design : accessibility,
> adherence to standards, and logical markup, are all
> equally important, and (from the perspective of those
> unable to share your privileged position), perhaps
> even more so.

,

I understand your position. I am actually quite sympathetic to it and I
appreciate the passion you bring to the discussion. But, if you ever want to
accomplish anything, ignoring the other imperfect realities of the web is
foolish in my opinion.

E.g., you will never win over the hearts and minds of the majority of web
designers/ developers without paying attention to their ugly, grimey,
day-to-day aesthetic needs. If you don't win them over (especially the
people who work on the few thousand big sites that millions of people visit
every day), then why bother with any of this work at all? Is it just for
hours upon hours of mental masturbation and intellectual chest thumping or
is for the real, altruistic, idealistic goals that lie at the kernel of the
w3c's design decisions? Because if it's the latter, then you've got some
work cut out for you.

Sometimes the basic message out of this list is "Designers/ developers of
the world, give us what we want- design accessible, compliant pages*." which
is all well and good, but then the message also says "BUT, we are going to
ignore what YOU want, because it is not important to us. In fact, if you go
so far as to ask about something you would like to see we'll belittle you."
Which (again I hate to bring up reality) means that people will just ignore
what you want and they will go with whatever hacked monstrosity it takes to
get their job done. It's tough to fight for more idealistic goals when
you've got marketing storm troopers hanging over your ever edit.

If you can't see what I'm getting at, then I have nothing else to say on the
matter.

*which I wholeheartedly believe to be a good thing

Rob

Received on Wednesday, 15 January 2003 13:10:35 UTC