[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Alternatives to the W3C
At 10:56 PM 1/19/00 -0500, Tyler Baker wrote: >The idea of new types of user interfaces being "too" complicated is often a >case of people >not having enough faith in people to learn new things. No one's arguing that such menus are "too complicated". But when over half the installed software base doesn't support them, that's generally a poor design decision. >P.S. - For the E-Commerce folks, if your users cannot afford to upgrade >their 486 to a >modern 500 dollar computer so they can run the latest version of Navigator >or IE, the >chances are they are not gonna spend a lot of money online anyways because >the don't even >have enough money to upgrade their ancient computer. Faulty assumption. Not all users who run something other than IE5 are "poor" people who run "ancient" 486 machines. They're often corporate users with strict IT policies about what software is run -- and it's not the software of YOUR choosing. They're educational users and other institutional situations. They are people like me, who spend tens of thousands of dollars online a year, between myself and the two businesses I purchase for, who simply prefer a different browser, and won't launch another one just so your nifty little menus will work. If you make it hard for me, you simply won't get the sale. I forget who ran the commercial, but it was about a business interviewing to outsource their web presence. Two very young, geeky guys were giving a presentation, laughing about how the technology would be obsolete as soon as they left the room, but that was ok, because they could come back on a new contract. That they'd use <this spiff thing> on the web site, because, hey, that's cool. Ah, now I remember, it was FedEx, because the tagline was "but you always ship FedEx". Developers who insist that the newest innovation is somehow critical to the product or application are alot like those guys -- you don't develop applications for clients and for the general public based primarily on what entertains YOU or relies on cutting edge software that is used mostly by other developers (same in web design, most users don't have 1024x768 or higher resolutions on 19 inch monitors -- so an argument of "it looks best for ME like this" holds no water). Play and innovate on demo-ware, or in arenas where you truly CAN control the environment, but doing so elsewhere is self-indulgent at the expense of the client/audience. Ann --- Just Released! - HTML BY Example Now shipping - Mastering XML Also in print: Effective Web Design: Master the Essentials Founder, WebGeek Communications http://www.webgeek.com Vice President-Finance, HTML Writers Guild http://www.hwg.org Director, HWG Online Education http://www.hwg.org/services/classes xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ or CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 Unsubscribe by posting to majordom@i... the message unsubscribe xml-dev (or) unsubscribe xml-dev your-subscribed-email@your-subscribed-address Please note: New list subscriptions now closed in preparation for transfer to OASIS.
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