Re: Questions

Darrell's opinions(!):

>>>For what type of equipment should I design for? Do I still have to design
for 15" monitors, 800 by 600 pixels and 28.8 modem (that is, prepare for the
worst case)? How many people are using better equipment than this (2% of the
market? over 50% of the market?)?<<<

As quickly as technologically advanced areas improve equipment, new people
elsewhere are joining the Internet with older equipment.  Is your site aimed
only at European Internet professionals, or does it contain content that
should be accessed by low-income U.S. citizens using public-library
machines?

Additional Considerations:

-- I know several people who view sites at 640x480 because they *can't see*
higher resoltuions, even with their glasses on.  Do people with poor vision
count?
-- WebTV has a max width of a bit over 560 pixels, with *no* horizontal
scrollbar.  Do they count?
-- Many people are new to computers and the Internet, and don't even realize
their screen resolution can be changed.  They have money, though, and are
eager to participate...
-- Many people surf with their browsers at less than full-screen.  I know I
do.  It is easier to switch windows while surfing.

Bottom line for me is a target of 560 pixels for the important content
area....including menus.

>>>How many browsers are supporting CSS properly? What is their market
share? Should I use CSS and drop the font tags?<<<

Being a conservative old man, I have just dropped font tags for CSS text
formatting early this year.  My pages are still quite usable in older
machines, although the body/background colors will depend upon the local
settings.  I still avoid block-level CSS formatting in favor of tables,
although I am eagerly anticipating the day...

>>>Should I design for HTML 4.0 or should I learn XML? Is XML very different
from HTML?<<<

XHTML was intended to answer part of your need here.  It is HTML 4.01
rewritten to add XML compliancy.  Although there are a couple of minor
points (well, they don't overwhelm me,anyway!) that need to be put off until
support grows, its an excellent answer for HTML-based displays.  As of May,
our company is coding to XHTML to the best limits of current support, and it
works fine.

If you intend to serve documents to non-HTML software (see WAP at w3.org,
for instance), definately pursue pure XML.  It will allow you (with the
proper server-side software) to translate a single document as necessary for
different target platforms.

If you begin with XHTML, you will have developed an excellent foundation for
understanding XML...

>>>What is the max size a page should have (including .htm documents,
pictures, style sheets etc)? I've always kept on the 50kb limit, should I
continue?<<<

I still try to fit home pages and sectional main pages under 40k, but (as
noted above), I am just a slow old man...:).  As also noted above, however,
the latest and greatest equipment is not universal by any means.  Many
people are paying for metered Internet access, and there are connections
that simply can't support large transfers.

Bottom line here is the client.  If they insist on heavy content despite
your berst efforts, you can only hope to wear them down in time.  I have
clients who have edged their average page sizes up over 100k, and their
sites make money for them, so I suspect its not the end of the world.

If you want to hit the audiences without money or broadband, though, 50k is
still a reasonable target.

* All these are my opinions.  I hope they help.

Darrell.

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