[thelist] targeting effectively

[Dave Stevens]

Been following this from the start, thought I'd drop in my tuppence
(giving this a distinctly british feel already - (: )

> 1. the "art and craft" of website creation?  Excuse me, but this is not
> playtime nor am I using playdoh.  This IS a business for me.  And yes, I
> take pride in my work, but it is neither an "art" or a "craft".
I beg to differ. I consider the task of creating a site that will be
well received by visitors as a very fine art.

[...]
 >And I'm damn good at it (judging by my clients' continued use of me
over the years and the
> clients that I have worked for).
Aah, modesty, a fine attribute.

> 2. The internet is not a something to care about in the sense of "wildlife"
> and the "environment" need to be cared about.  What I care about in regard
> to the internet is that adoption of technologies that forward the goals of
> my clients are made readily available so that I can better design
> applications for my clients to target their audiences.
But standards compliance is *not* a good idea merely to allow users of
older browsers to use your site. In a way, you can be fairly sure that
you are future proofing your site by using standards compliant code.

> 3. I code for the people that my clients want me to code for.  If they say
> "we need all AOL users to be able to view this", I will make sure all AOL
> users will be able to view it.  This is not short-sightedness.  This is a
> business reality.
Until they come back a few months later after a sudden drop in the use
of AOL
(you never know, it might happen) and tell you that now they want all IE
users
  can view it. So you change your coding, and its peachy for IE users.
Netscape, Opera
and Mozilla users? Who needs them! Well, thats what you are thinking
until a few months later, when popularity for microsoft suddenly wains
due to bad publicity over an anti-trust law suit (again, who's to say
its impossible?). The use of IE takes a down turn as a result, and again
  your client's site is inaccessible. So they ask you to make it
accessible by all these other browsers - you're getting sick of
re-coding the very same site - same content, same design - but it can't
be helped, right?

Wrong. Standards compliant code would help this. You'd have a site that
was accessible in all these browsers. Maybe the site wouldn't look as
pretty in some of them - so what? When you go to an online store, do you
go "WOW! I'll buy here cause that flash animation (that took ages to
load cause I'm still using a 56K dial-up) is great!" or do you go "WOW!
I'll buy here - look at those prices!"

Content is king, standards compliance is god. No two ways about it, make
it functional, THEN make it pretty, without losing any of that
functionality.

I'm feeling pretty sorry for aardvark and .jeff right now as they have
had to state the same points a number of times, a lot of good points,
just because
it seems that people don't listen.

One last point, given the size of download for IE, and the rate at which
its filesize grows with every subsequent release, how long will it be
before users without the luxury of fast connections start looking for
alternatives? Or have they already?

This email brought to you by Dave, a 56K user, utilising Mozilla.