[thelist] Pixel size fonts, cookies, javascript and other spooks

[Christian Heilmann]

> The owner (or publisher) of the site does what they want to do with
> their site. If they wish to have Flash intros and Javascript rollovers
> in their navigation frame, then they do. I think none of us should have
> nothing to say to it - after all it's their site. What we can (and
> should) do instead is to inform people of the consequences of their
> choices: "you have Flash intro - you could lose sales n%        to Nielsen
> research x". And then people can make their own educated decisions on
> their site.

But there is where the problem lies. None of these researches are
being made because nobody pays for them. I had a Nielsen research
group make an accessibility audit of one of the sites I created and I
came out of it with demigod status. However, a quick glance myself
showed me that the editors hadn't bothered to add any proper
alternative texts and there was a lot of #bbb on #ccc text in the
redesign (none of my templates had these defects). Not many agencies
have the gall to go  to a client and tell them their product needs
serious overhaul, the same way not many companies dare to approach
clients again after five years explaining that what they sold then was
outdated and badly needs a do-over.
Furthermore, there is not enough negative feedback, as annnoyed
visitors just leave without saying what went wrong.

Good example: I ordered a monitor at a web retailer for a reallly
great price and got stuck in a "we are checking your credit card
details" loop for 6 days(!). I emailed them three times only to get
automated responses. I used yell.com to find out there number just to
get another automated system that - five minutes and 12 menus later -
told me to please refer to the web site.

You could argue now that this is a good way of protecting yourself
against negative feedback - which some clients have to do, or they
would drown in abusive mail - but I consider it my last ever shopping
experience there. If only I could tell them about it.
 
> So instead of discussions like:
> - that site uses Foo and I have disabled it - I'd never buy my Bar from
> such a site - it just sucks!
> - I wouldn't care for your pennies! Besides, 99.99999% of Bar buyers
> have Foo enabled.
> We could have discussions like:
> - I noticed that the site uses Foo for Baz - that could have
> consequences like...
> - In addition to its benefits Foo has also negative effects, which could
> be dealt like this...
> 
> In short: instead of telling people what to do and not to do, we could
> help them to make educated decisions. Instead of being preachers
> protecting the purity of sacred web we could be teachers guiding others
> to the labyrinth of the working web.

 Well said. That was my stance when I claimed we should get our hands
dirty and improve step by step instead of preaching from the ivory
tower.

-- 
Chris Heilmann 
Blog: http://www.wait-till-i.com
Writing: http://icant.co.uk/  
Binaries: http://www.onlinetools.org/