[thelist] pixel perfect requirements and web standards

[Shawn K. Quinn]

On Sun, 2005-06-05 at 16:26 -0700, chris wrote:
> Hi
> 
> Maybe someone has a good reality check for me before I burn bridges.
> 
> I've had the luxury of always working with designers who have some
> knowledge of how websites work and I've never been required to build a
> "pixel perfect" website. I've had a 3 month conversation with a designer
> about web standards, open standards, open source etc. I'm now developing
> his website which is also our first collaborative project and after
> showing him an early html/css iteration discovered that he requires the
> website production of his photoshop web design document be
> "pixel-perfect".

Won't happen, not on a well-made site.

> In my estimation, the only way to make any website pixel perfect is to
> either do it in images and tables or in flash. 

Either way, you're working against the strengths of the World Wide Web
as a medium. Images will invariably be too small for some, too large for
others. Flash has this problem, in addition to the problem of the
plug-in: it's non-free software and only available for the operating
systems Macromedia (Adobe?) chooses to compile it for.

> So, the only way I know to meet that requirement is to either do the
> site in images or in flash. My opinion is that if it's in images, it
> might as well be in flash - flash is actually more accessible and more
> se friendly than images are and supposedly the next release of flash
> will be even more accessible and se friendly whereas images will always
> be images.

Depends on what you actually mean by "more accessible"; see above for an
example of one way Flash is less accessible.

> In any case, his response when I suggested doing it in flash was to
> essentially panic, suggest that he should take the project to someone
> else who could "handle this sort of site" and to demand a more rigorous
> daily reporting schedule. It's not a complex website and it has minimal
> functionality most of which is a portfolio that we were already planning
> to do in flash. If it did not have to be pixel-perfect it would take me
> about 20 hours to build, fully test, and tweak it. Is his reaction a
> common scenario with non-web savvy designers? 

I'll say it like this: Lack of clue doesn't begin or end with your
partner on this project.

> The business case for web standards usually focuses upon business and
> financial/maintenance benefits. What are some benefits to web standards
> that would appeal to a print designer with a background in marketing? 

Non-pixel-perfect design works on more browsers than an image- or
Flash-based one ever will, thus a higher percentage of the target
market, thus better marketing.

Note also, Flash is also a frequent "junk vector" so non-Flash
alternatives need to be there anyway. (I've been running Flash plug-in
free for most of three years.)

> The website audience is corporate and uses browsers and operating
> systems that are 3 years old at most - if their gear is 3 years old,
> they're likely to upgrade in the next year so backward compatibility is
> less of an issue.

It's a bad idea to rely on this. There is always the chance someone will
need to access the site from something older or different from their
usual setup.

-- 
Shawn K. Quinn <skquinn at speakeasy.net>