Re: [OT] flash n stuff

[Robert "J. Hansen" <rjhansen@xxxxxxxx>]

> That's like "I own a Ford Model T, why can't I drive on the Autobahn?". 

More like, "I own a Mercedes, not a Ford, why can't I drive on the
Autobahn?"  A great many engineers prefer UNIX to Windows because it
gives considerably better performance.

Heck, a Preston Tucker from the '50s can drive on the Autobahn.  Maybe
not in the unlimited-speed lane, but it certainly can.

People who write HTML specifically for specific OSes and browsers are
missing the point.  Content and presentation are separate.

> Somewhat egocentric (sp?), if you ask me. For a lot of websites, the design 
> is a valid part of the content, or better, "message", you want to 
> "broadcast". And also, the design, of course _with_ the content, makes you 
> remember a website.

Yep.  And you're allowed to give suggestions about layout.  But if I,
for whatever reason, want to render all emphasized text in italics,
that's my prerogative.  If I want to turn off all inlined images and
rely on ALT tags instead, that's my prerogative.  If I want to run it in
800x600 (like I do on my laptop, because anything more than that is
unreadable), then that's my prerogative.

Sites which make assumptions about what kind of machine they're
displaying on are fragile and broken.  Look at Jet Li's homepage, which
is very Flash-heavy.  It's a media event, yep.  Looks real nice on
Windows 2K, IE 5.5 and Flash.  Looks like crap on WebTV and isn't even
renderable on a Palm.  Nor is it accessible to the disabled.

When you're writing a webpage, the thing to remember is you get to
*suggest* layout, but you don't get to *specify* anything but the
content.  A lot of places think they get to specify layout, and it means
that their pages break horribly the instant someone does something
strange, like "disable in-page fonts, always use my defaults".  Or "make
all backgrounds plain white and all foreground text black".

> The Internet of today IMHO is not only information, it's information and 
> design. If you want something to look good, you have to tell the browser 
> how he has to display the damn file :)

Unfortunately, HTML was never meant to be a page-specification
language.  If you want that, then look into TeX as your markup language;
TeX maps everything onto pages and has some really cool tools to ensure
that everything looks properly.

> I don't think that's a bad thing :) , at least when it's no ugly as hell...

You need three things for a good webpage: standards-compliance, content,
and consistency.  Standards-compliance is essential because you don't
know what your client is viewing it on.  When I'm browsing the Web from
home on my Win2K box on a 22" monitor cranked up to 1600x1200, I have
much different display requirements from my UNIX box on a 17" monitor,
which has much different display requirements from my UNIX laptop.  All
three of them use different browsers, to boot: my Win2K box uses IE 5.5,
my UNIX box uses a Mozilla nightly build, and my laptop uses Netscape
Communicator 4.75.  (Oh, and I've got another box (which I rarely use)
which runs BeOS 5 with NetPositive in 1600x1200.)

If you specify to the client, "This page must be 1024 pixels wide", my
laptop will happily say "Screw you!  Just give me the content and /I'll/
figure out how to render it, based on what my user has told me to
do."  And then your content looks like hell, because you're trying to
specify appearance when HTML is only a mark-up language, not a page
description language.

> A web designer has to make the content look good, it's the job of the
> author to do the content.

Poppycock.  A web designer's job is to make sure the content has a
consistent interface and is marked up properly.  If a page is marked up
properly, it'll look reasonably good across all platforms and will
demonstrate a heck of a lot of consistency, to boot.  A few months ago I
did a quick usability analysis for some friends who were running their
own site.  I tried their site under NS 4.7x, Mozilla nightlies,
NetPositive, Lynx, IE 4.0, IE 5.0, IE 5.5, and WebTV.  I tried it under
a 28.8k modem connections, under DSL and under T1.

Every single time there was a problem, the problem stemmed from either
(a) a lack of standards compliance on the *browser's* part (they were
quite good about writing standard-adherent HTML, but IE 4.0 and NS 4.7x
aren't very standard-compliant), or (b) a failure on their part to
properly separate content from presentation.  

What Roger is talking about here shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.  So
he uses an older Pentium system on a 28.8K connection--so what?  With a
properly-designed site, that shouldn't matter a damn.  He should be able
to turn off inlined images in his Web browser to speed up page
downloads, turn off Javascript, and still be able to access the
important content.


-- Robert J. Hansen, rjhansen@inav.net
-- OpenPGP key available on request