[thelist] targeting effectively

aardvark roselli at earthlink.net
Sun Mar 24 19:34:22 CST 2002


> From: "David Kutcher" <david_kutcher at hotmail.com>
>
> > Read back thru aardvark and matt's posts. In about a thousand words
> > you've got a decade of coding experience you could benefit from.
> I've been coding professionally for close to 10 yrs.  Does that mean
> I'm special too?

i'm special in the way short buses and hockey helmets are special...

> > I'll attempt to summarize it: if you write good code, it will work
> > nearly everywhere.
> No, what they are saying is write code minus any functionalities that
> you cant effectively replicate using standard vanilla html 2.0 and
> don't rely upon these functionalities in your site

ok, let's try this...

do you use the <label> element?  accesskey?  tabindex?

if not, why not?  i do... they allow those on later browsers to take advantage of
the usability and accessibility features of HTML 4.01, but they completely fail
to block anyone...

i don't feel limited... i would only feel limited if i chose not to code well or didn't
know how to...

> > If you're working hard to reach 90% of your audience, and these guys
> > are working less to reach 99%+ of their audience, who do you think
> > is writing 'good code' ?
> No, the question is if I'm working to tailor and customize a presence
> to target 99% of my market, should I "dumb down" what I am creating so
> that the other 1% can view/access/etc. the presence?

you don't have to dumb it down -- usually... if you can build a site that doesn't
rely on browser-specific features, then you're pretty well off...

out of your 99% of users, does that assume they all have JS enabled?  they
all aren't on AOL?  they all have good installs?  aren't behind corporate
proxies that cache cookies and scripts?

if not, what number are you really at?  do you know?

my stats say *all* of my users can see Flash content, because Flash
supposedly comes installed on all the browsers in my logs... but i know for a
fact that there are 400 people in my target audience who do not see Flash
because their corporate environment disables plug-ins...

if i went just by my raw stats, i'd be screwed out of 400 users...  if i went by
my real research, i'd skip the Flash and retain those 400 users... you may
know these answers, but not everyone does...

> Does "good code" mean:
> 1. available to everyone (at a possible loss of
> creativity/functionality) or 2. optimized for the target market (at a
> possible loss of a few users)?

neither...

code optimized for the project based on the standards and how well it
degrades to hit the target audience and the stragglers and still conforms to
accessibility law... and only build in capability that doesn't render the site
*completely* useless to users (like JS-only nav) or search engines...





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