site review request

B McDonald wrote:

Brian wrote ...
B McDonald wrote:
[snip]
It is way too constricting. I mean, unless I'm selling pantyhose
to the masses - or some other mass-market item - there's no point.

If you're not writing for "the masses," then why write at all? Shut
off your site and reduce the noise.

Huh? Pablo Neruda wrote for himself. Where would that put the rest of
us if he didn't write his daily poetry?
[snip]

The real answer to the question that you are responding to is "cater for your
client's target audience, and they may not be the masses".

You may be your own client, of course. (As I am for all of my sites).

That doesn't mean specifically code to inhibit the rest. And there are many
equal-cost alternatives where one version is more widely accessible than
another, and it worth getting into the habit of doing things the more
accessible way.

But there comes a point at which it is valid to say "that is all I am prepared
to spend on this, everyone else can take pot-luck or walk away".

--
Barry Pearson
http://www.Barry.Pearson.name/photography/
http://www.BirdsAndAnimals.info/
http://www.ChildSupportAnalysis.co.uk/

B McDonald wrote:
[snip]

Can someone please tell me why anyone designs for an 800x600 window?
I'm at a loss here. What decade are we in?

My reading is that still nearly half of viewers have that size screen,
although the proportion is steadily reducing.

Some say "design so that resolution doesn't matter". But that is hard when
images are being provided, whether GIF (or whatever) diagrams, or JPEG
photographs. Hard decisions have to be made - they are not flexible like text
is.

After some tests on 640 x 480 screens, I decided not to spend any time
worrying about that case. I don't deliberately exclude them - I simply ignore
them. What they do it up to them. If they are able to resize, horizontally
scroll, manage with just the alt text - fine. If they walk away - also fine.

After a lot of checking, I decided for my latest site that all photographs
would fit in a 700 x 500 (width x height) pixel box, snug in at least one
dimension. (Eg. 700 x 470, or 350 x 500). I was doomed to irritate some
people. (Including low-speed-dial-up users! And I have been told that my
photographs are too small for broadband users with high-resolution screens!)

Sometimes you just have to say "life's too short, this is my decision and I'll
live with it".

--
Barry Pearson
http://www.Barry.Pearson.name/photography/
http://www.BirdsAndAnimals.info/
http://www.ChildSupportAnalysis.co.uk/

On Wed, 01 Oct 2003 00:58:40 GMT, "B McDonald" <no (AT) spam (DOT) com> wrote:

Snipped

The main GALTSVALLEY.COM overflows an 800x600 window. A horizontal
scrollbar is present. Redesign your template to eliminate it.


Can someone please tell me why anyone designs for an 800x600 window? I'm at
a loss here. What decade are we in?

In a decade in which there are many elderly people with failing
eyesight who cannot read the small print on larger resolutions.

Regards, Alex

Brian wrote:

B McDonald wrote:
It is way too constricting. I mean, unless I'm selling pantyhose
to the masses - or some other mass-market item - there's no point.

If you're not writing for "the masses," then why write at all? Shut
off your site and reduce the noise.

Huh? Pablo Neruda wrote for himself. Where would that put the rest
of us if he didn't write his daily poetry?

I didn't say don't write. I said shut off the web site. Save
yourself money and time coding. If you don't care whether your
audience is capable of reading what you write, then do what Pablo
Neruda did: write on hard copy.
[snip]

There is a difference between writing for a target audience and writing for
the masses.

There is a difference between writing for a target audience and not caring
whether your audience is capable of reading what you write.

--
Barry Pearson
http://www.Barry.Pearson.name/photography/
http://www.BirdsAndAnimals.info/
http://www.ChildSupportAnalysis.co.uk/

"Brian" wrote:

B McDonald wrote:
It is way too constricting. I mean, unless I'm selling pantyhose
to the masses - or some other mass-market item - there's no point.

If you're not writing for "the masses," then why write at all? Shut
off your site and reduce the noise.

Huh? Pablo Neruda wrote for himself. Where would that put the rest of us
if
he didn't write his daily poetry?

I didn't say don't write. I said shut off the web site. Save
yourself money and time coding. If you don't care whether your
audience is capable of reading what you write, then do what Pablo
Neruda did: write on hard copy.

Maybe you should stick to technical advice.

Maybe you should stick to pen and paper.

I must admit that there is both purity and beauty in seeing the promise of
Web standards adhered to. But I fail to see the beauty or necessity in such
personal remarks. All you had to do to win me over was to explain why I
should care about designing for 800x600 viewports - kinda like Mr. Shagnasty
did. Responding to this thread probably has no point seeing as in another,
later thread I come 'round on the subject. Your technical advice - when
fully proffered - is excellent. My remark was a compliment. And technical
advice is the point of this forum.

Brian

Have you just finished reading Atlas Shrugged?

Mr. Shagnasty was good enough to offer up some explanation on the 800x600
theme after he stated it in his initial critique. I thank you for the links
too. Remember, I wasn't aware of the 800x600 problem before it was brought
to my attention. The point of this post was to discover the problems with my
site design. I initially protested the idea that I should care about the
display of my site in ultra-constrained viewports. I wondered why it affects
me. It was nice of all involved to explain to me why I would want to do such
a thing. Now the self-education begins.

The vast majority of readers misinterpret Atlas Shrugged.

Brian

Brian wrote:

Barry Pearson wrote:

There is a difference between writing for a target audience and
writing for the masses.

There is a difference between writing for a target audience and not
caring whether your audience is capable of reading what you write.

There is a difference between claiming you know the hardware and
software profile of your audience, and actually knowing it.

There is an old military saying. Time spent in reconnaissance is never wasted.

It is important to try to find out such things. A lot of effort can be saved
by doing so. We may identify that only X% of extra users would be gained by
enabling a certain s/w & h/w profile to acces while a web site easily, while
more than X% extra users can be gained by some other means costing the same
amount, such as adding more content or promoting the site.

We may never be certain - either way. So we deal with uncertainty in the
various ways that businesses deal with uncertainty daily. We look at
probabilities and risks, etc. Then we make our decisions and accept the
consequences.

Some principles of marketing have served us well outside the web. They can
serve us well on the web too. And that especially concerns understanding the
potential audiences / customers / etc. It is obvious that we don't need to
serve everyone in the world. We need to understand who we DO need to serve,
and the trade-offs between extra cost v. extra customers.

Whatever web site we are developing, probably most web-accessing people in the
world are not plausibly in the target audience. And their problems are not our
problems. We may simply decide, for example, that people who don't speak
English are not in our target audience. We won't explicitly cater for them. We
won't even waste time thinking about whether they have suitable translation
capability. We may simply decide that non-English-speaking people are not our
problem.

This thread has talked about 800 x 600 screens. What would the discussion have
been if it had talked about 640 x 480 screens? Is there any plausible reason
for any web site developer to spend an extra minute thinking about the issues
of VGA screens? In many cases, I suggest not. Which suggests that we are
entirely valid if we decide whether or not we should cater for people with
particular sceen sizes.

--
Barry Pearson
http://www.Barry.Pearson.name/photography/
http://www.BirdsAndAnimals.info/
http://www.ChildSupportAnalysis.co.uk/

This thread has talked about 800 x 600 screens. What would the discussion
have
been if it had talked about 640 x 480 screens? Is there any plausible
reason
for any web site developer to spend an extra minute thinking about the
issues
of VGA screens? In many cases, I suggest not. Which suggests that we are
entirely valid if we decide whether or not we should cater for people with
particular sceen sizes.

Thank you for expressing that point of view. And not that I've been seeking
any form of validation or even vindication. But I genuinely and
unantagonistically meant it when I asked why should I design for 800x600. It
was offered up as a site critique... perhaps (/perhaps/) a little
uncritically (sorry Mr. Shagnasty). But I've been all over this territory
before and I ultimately decided to shrink my goddam company header!

(wanna see? -- http://www.galtsvalley.com)

I'm getting around to doing what Brian suggested as well... even though he
treated me like an opposing soccer fan.

I am a man not a soccer ball!

Still, it sure was fun to talk about Pablo Neruda.

;-)

Brian

"Barry Pearson" <news (AT) childsupportanalysis (DOT) co.uk> exclaimed in <YB_eb.11$_o5.3 (AT) newsfep1-gui (DOT) server.ntli.net>:

been if it had talked about 640 x 480 screens? Is there any plausible reason
for any web site developer to spend an extra minute thinking about the issues
of VGA screens? In many cases, I suggest not. Which suggests that we are

No, there is no plausible reason for any web site developer to spend any
extra time thinking about any resolution.

There are quite a few plausible reasons why the site developer should ONLY
spend time thinking about NO resolution.

But is there any point in repeating this, thread after thread ? I think
not.

--
- Tina Holmboe Greytower Technologies
tina (AT) greytower (DOT) net http://www.greytower.net/
[+46] 0708 557 905

"Barry Pearson" <news (AT) childsupportanalysis (DOT) co.uk> exclaimed in <0gyeb.8360$4D.6420157 (AT) newsfep2-win (DOT) server.ntli.net>:

My reading is that still nearly half of viewers have that size screen,
although the proportion is steadily reducing.

That's odd reading - there are no reliable statistics on the matter. What
exist doesn't count: it talks about the *resolution*, not the physical
reality[1].

Some say "design so that resolution doesn't matter". But that is hard when
images are being provided, whether GIF (or whatever) diagrams, or JPEG
photographs. Hard decisions have to be made - they are not flexible like text

We've been down this road before. I can only conclude, to my surprise, that
you don't read what we write.

If the CONTENT itself is 800 pixels wide, then there is nothing you can do
to make that fit 640. That has nothing what so ever to do with the
RESOLUTION on the client's monitor.

"Content" does not equal "current resolution of client monitor".

people. (Including low-speed-dial-up users! And I have been told that my
photographs are too small for broadband users with high-resolution screens!)

Same thing. If the CONTENT is x number of pixels, then it IS x number of
pixels. There is nothing contradictory about this.

We've allready discussed it. Problems arise when you take content which does
not have an inherent size and squeeze that content into a, by you, perceived
physical reality.[2]

Your image is not a problem.

Sometimes you just have to say "life's too short, this is my decision and I'll
live with it".

You're right. It is, of course, your choice whether you want to spend that
short life doing simple things in a complicated manner.



[1]
Aka the window size, if any.

[2]
"No boom today. Boom tomorrow"

--
- Tina Holmboe Greytower Technologies
tina (AT) greytower (DOT) net http://www.greytower.net/
[+46] 0708 557 905