Re: Where is the web going, graphically?

----- Original Message -----
From: <allred(at)its.state.ms.us>
To: <hwg-theory(at)hwg.org>; <owner-hwg-theory(at)hwg.org>
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2000 8:25 AM
Subject: Re: Where is the web going, graphically?


>
> Heather,
>
> I REALLY like the ideas you've presented here regarding patterns.  The
> Internet and the Web have changed radically over the past several years,
> and it's sometimes difficult to get one's bearings when things are moving
> so fast. Pattern recognition can help you see things that might remain
> invisible otherwise.
>
> My own take is that we're still on the tail end of the corporate frontier
> days, and the end is not in sight. Everybody is in such a hurry to cash in
> that they don't pay much attention to how well their software works. The
> old adage about building a better mousetrap no longer applies. You can
> build a really stinky one, but if your corporation is large enough, with
> enough marketing dollars and clout, you can sell anything. For instance,
> the E-mail client I'm forced to use doesn't have a clue about E-mail and
> how best to handle it. But it sells like the dickens. The buyouts and
> mergers don't improve products; they only increase marketing clout.
>
> I would like to think that people would see the benefits of XML and all
the
> technologies it has already spawned. The opportunity exists for developers
> to finally boil it down to the code and do it right (with XHTML/CSS), but
> experience tells me that most will find a way to screw it up. When it's
> easier and quicker to make money than to do it right, guess which approach
> usually wins.
>
> Sorry for my rather dark mood on this, but I was spoiled in the early PC
> days. When the average user was highly technical, companies spent time and
> effort to actually document their software and try to explain how to use
> it. Now, the user base includes far more inexperienced people, but you're
> hard put to find any company that does more than pay lip service to
> documentation. Most don't even have a concept of what it means to document
> something. They provide no written documentation and only a small set of
> Help Files that do little more than describe the existence of features.
> It's up to users to figure out how the features work and interact with
each
> other.
>
> Having spent a few years writing software documentation, I know it can be
> done, and I know that it still should be done. But I know it won't be. Not
> when corporations consider it an expense they can cut to fatten their own
> profits. When did we stop demanding excellence?
>
> Regards,
> John Allred
>
> (The opinions expressed are my own, and not those of my employer)
>
>
>
>
>
>

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