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

VOLKAN ÖZÇELİK volkan.ozcelik at gmail.com
Tue Sep 20 06:06:44 CDT 2005


> 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.

Preaching, to some extent, may be enlightening. But, imho, what the
web needs is not passive preachers, but good convincers as well as
proactive decision-makers .
It may come to the point "to be XYZ you should do T and avoid F". We
should impose that, with proper reasoning of course, if we have to.

You cannot tell one that their sales would decrease, but you can tell
about the evolution of the web: You may tell the reason for seperation
of content and presentation. You may talk about the
Model-View-Controller paradigm. You may tell that not everyone is
equally capable and not everyone has the same medium.
You may tell them why the good old FONT tag has gone for good, why the
HR tags noshade attribute is deprecated...

imho, simply eyeing on their "target audience" and considering nothing
else is way too much marketing-oriented (don't take it personal
please).

Besides, following up standards will do no harm and may, for sure,
bring  several benefits in terms of SEO, page weight, proper
structure, etc. which have been discussed several times in the list
before.
 
I think most of us remember, a-list apart's browser upgrade campaing.
The "go hell with bad browsers" thing:

It did not completely succeed, because it was abused because say,
people whose lovely DHTML menu was not showing properly, redirecting
the client to that page, without giving alternative content of any
sort.

But the failure is not their fault, it is the abusers' . So it does
not mean that defending an idea strongly, is an improper path to
follow.

...

Just another thing: let us say that one imperatively declares "you
must to use technology X in the Z path but not T or K because they are
not popular any more" (which I am sure is not the style of anyone in
the list)
Then, at least  I expect, the the person whom all those said should
ask a single question:

"Why ?"

if he does not wonder the reason(s), and continues doing what he knows
blindly then, imho , even a prophet cannot preach the correct road to
him.

Cheers,
Volkan.


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