Re: professionalism and wysiwyg

At 12:49 p.m. 10/10/98 -0500, Jeffrey Frazier wrote:
>I believe you are missing the point. First of all, the old-beat up Ford web
>browsers (lets just say
>Netscape or MSIE 2.0 or less) obviously does NOT meet the current needs.

Whose needs, though?  It seems to me that if the user has decided
it _does_ fit his needs, he's the one who makes the decision.

>Also, I
>believe that the analogies of cars is a poor one because of the cost. It is quite
>an investment to buy a new car, involving a great deal of money and time. On the
>other hand, it takes no money and about 3 good hours to d/l a decent web browser.

Well, 3 hours is a long time for the average web user, who probably
has no idea what they're getting or why, and may not even know how
how to install new software.

There's a learning curve involved, too.

>When the people out there have it that easy, why are we busting our butts to adapt
>to their lousy browsers?

Because you don't have to design for -lousy- browsers, just for
-all- browsers.  The effort to do this is really minimal.

>It's not as if they don't know there's anything better out
>there. The web is chock-full of those little images that say "This site designed
>for [advanced browser ver. of your choice]". These images almost always have a link
>to a page where you can d/l the browser! How much easier can you get?

You could volunteer to come over to their house and explain what
a new browser is, how to download it, how to install it, and how to
use it.

I'm half serious here.  Some people won't, no matter how easy we
technogeeks think it is, take those steps themselves without someone
helping them through it.  They're not lazy or stupid people; they
are simply less comfortable with computers than we are.

>When a user comes to a page with material it obivously can't read and multimedia
>that doesn't work, I believe that if they want to be able to view this content, it
>is their responsibility to get over to Netscape or Microsoft and download a new
>browser. We shouldn't have to do more work because the user is a lazy bum.

You're missing what's a very important factor of the user-content
creator relationship:  For most web pages, you _want_ people to
read it.  You, the author, lose out in some way if they can't
access your content.

Thus, if you want them to read it, you'll do the work.  If you
don't want them to read it, you can lock them out -- but they WON'T
go download a new browser, instead they'll simply go elsewhere or
try to use your page as best they can.

Have YOU ever downloaded a new browser just because some web page
told you to?  Here's an example.  Let's say you go to my page,
because you want to know who exactly this Kynn fellow is, and why
you should listen to him.  You load the page, and at the bottom
it says:

     THIS PAGE BEST USED WITH OPERA 3.5
     http://www.operasoftware.com/

Question:  Would you go download that browser?  It's a quick download,
relatively speaking, so it would take less than MSIE or Netscape.

If you wouldn't -- and you're a technophile, presumably -- and the
download is smaller than a "big name" 4.0 browser, how can you
expect someone less technologically sophisticated to upgrade to
unknown software, at great expense of time, merely on your say-so?

>Also, I have heard people complaining about people who aren't able to run advanced
>browsers because of their computers. That's a load of bull. The sys reqs for
>browsing software is very minimal. I can run any browsing software perfectly well
>on my junky old 66Mhz.

Some browsers, yes -- Opera runs great on smaller systems.  Other
browsers not so much.  Especially when you're talking about high
tech multimedia pages.

--
Kynn Bartlett  <kynn(at)idyllmtn.com>             http://www.idyllmtn.com/~kynn/
Chief Technologist & Co-Owner, Idyll Mountain Internet; Fullerton, California
Enroll now for my online stylesheets (CSS) class! http://www.hwg.org/classes/
The voice of the future?   http://www.hwg.org/opcenter/w3c/voicebrowsers.html

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