[thelist] targeting effectively

Erik Mattheis gozz at gozz.com
Sun Mar 24 23:08:01 CST 2002


The simple fact that we're talking about the web automatically leaves
out about half of the English speaking world - and a clear majority
of the rest of the world. It's ridiculous to argue that it's a major
flaw if a website doesn't work for 1% of it's potential audience ...
or 10% ... or even 70%: Quicktime! You've got to be out of your MIND!
only 30% of web users can experience Quicktime!

There is a major market in which Quicktime has a 100% penetration.
Where are the "lost sales" people are so fond of citing in these
types of discussions if you use Quicktime on a site to promote a
Mac-only product?

Read the subject of the thread: "targeting effectively." ... a
healthy direction this could take is talking about what you should
consider when deciding if a site is going to require browser feature
X.

At 1:49 PM -0800 3/24/02, jeff wrote:
>cnn.com does *not* require javascript.
[...]
>where are all these major sites that require javascript?

A good deal of the major sites you listed _do_ require cookies. It's
just a matter of how high from the ground you're going to hold the
bar. Those sites _could_ use a query string and sessions on the
server instead of user cookies - but they don't for good and obvious
reasons.

Many web projects with less generous budgets have equally valid
reasons for requiring JavaScript.

At 3:22 AM +0000 3/25/02, Dave Stevens wrote:
>>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 [...]

Great if you can make a website that works in NS 1.0 and for a 84
year old user from the Ozarks who views the web through a mercury
filling in his molar ... and will probably render decently in
Netscape MMXCIX. That sounds like it's your bag, but it's not
everybody's.

There's no way around leaving some potential visitors out to achieve
some things which are undoubtedly valuable from a marketing or even
usability perspective.

>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.

Funny that you use "king" and "god" ... the point you seem to be
making is completely despotic and dogmatic: Giving compliance,
accessibility and near universal functionality backseats to something
else is heretical to the Authority of Accessibility and Compliance.

>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.

It's not that some people don't listen: it's that some people, when
hearing that coding for standards is a good idea turn it into "Unless
it's 100% compliant, it's a bad idea."
--

__________________________________________
- Erik Mattheis

(612) 377 2272
http://goZz.com/

__________________________________________



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