Rant: One more browser to test

[dorayme]

Then as a professional Web designer, trying to make a living designing
functional, practical Web sites, maybe I should ignore the beta versions and
stick to working with "released" versions. In fact, why waste time designing
for browsers that stats show are used by less than 5% of Web visitors? After
all, when this project is finished, the next one awaits.

You need to distinguish between having a browser to check how
things look and designing for that browser. Once you do make this
distinction and once you do realise that the browser is a Beta,
you use the information smartly as an alert. If something looks
right, fine. You have no worries. If something looks wrong that
does not show up on your normal browsers, and you cannot quickly
see what it is, you then can check against a released version
(ask a Mac person, ask on an ng).

 

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Sat, 21 Jul 2007 19:35:22
GMT nice.guy.nige scribed:

While the city slept, El Kabong ([email protected]) feverishly
typed...


What great reasoning! Excuse me while I phone my boss and explain that
I'm going to just ignore approximately 250 - 300 unique visitors
(otherwise known as potential customers) to his site every day. I'm
sure he'll understand.

Wow, and here I thought you were going to miss the point.

(I believe he was being sarcastic, as you were.)

 

[El Kabong]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Sat, 21 Jul 2007 19:35:22
GMT nice.guy.nige scribed:


Wow, and here I thought you were going to miss the point.

(I believe he was being sarcastic, as you were.)

I dunno, N. maybe I should have been but, to be honest, I wasn't... probably
because I've never had a site successful enough to attract 6,000 unique
visitors per day (300/.05) (I'm small potatoes.) However, after checking
stats for most of my 82 sites, I could only come up with 10 visitors using
browsers other than IE6 or 7, FF, or Safari. Add that to the fact that,
realistically, only about 1 out of 50 visitors ever becomes a cash customer,
(which isn't too bad a close rate,) it's doubtful that any of the 10 "brand
Xers" were lost sales anyway.

That's not to say that those 10 visitors were *unable* to view the pages as
presented, just that the sites weren't *optimized* for their brand X
browsers. But guess what! They're most likely used to that because the
majority of the sites they visit are not going to be optimized for their
off-the-wall software either.

No, when my client is looking at doubled or tripled costs for his site's
design in order to appeal to a handful of nerds who are more interested in
research (or just being weird) than actually shopping, he'll usually opt to
ignore those visitors using the geekware. It just boils down to a
combination of diminished return on investment and good business sense.

We'll leave the experimental stuff to the folks who don't have anything else
to do with their time or money. After they get it debugged and standardized,
we'll jump all over it. I realize that, being concerned with the absolute
correctness of design as this group is, (appropriately,) it isn't likely
anyone here will agree with my POV, but C'est la vie! I will survive.

But thanks, N, for the vote of confidence... even if it was misplaced.

El

 

[Chaddy2222]

I dunno, N. maybe I should have been but, to be honest, I wasn't... probably
because I've never had a site successful enough to attract 6,000 unique
visitors per day (300/.05) (I'm small potatoes.) However, after checking
stats for most of my 82 sites, I could only come up with 10 visitors using
browsers other than IE6 or 7, FF, or Safari. Add that to the fact that,
realistically, only about 1 out of 50 visitors ever becomes a cash customer,
(which isn't too bad a close rate,) it's doubtful that any of the 10 "brand
Xers" were lost sales anyway.

That's not to say that those 10 visitors were *unable* to view the pages as
presented, just that the sites weren't *optimized* for their brand X
browsers. But guess what! They're most likely used to that because the
majority of the sites they visit are not going to be optimized for their
off-the-wall software either.

No, when my client is looking at doubled or tripled costs for his site's
design in order to appeal to a handful of nerds who are more interested in
research (or just being weird) than actually shopping, he'll usually opt to
ignore those visitors using the geekware. It just boils down to a
combination of diminished return on investment and good business sense.

We'll leave the experimental stuff to the folks who don't have anything else
to do with their time or money. After they get it debugged and standardized,
we'll jump all over it. I realize that, being concerned with the absolute
correctness of design as this group is, (appropriately,) it isn't likely
anyone here will agree with my POV, but C'est la vie! I will survive.

But thanks, N, for the vote of confidence... even if it was misplaced.

Well, the fact that you don't get that many visitors per day probably
means that for whatever reason they can't find your site properly or
if they do find it then it must be un-useable in some way. So they
leave without buying anything.
What you need to remember is that, the people useing browsers (that
might not be popular) might be willing to spend large amounts of money
(or might be the ones that want to join your non profit group),
whatever. The main thing is, you can't just presume by looking at your
logs that everyone is useing the same browser configgeration.
As an example I am useing IE 6 but I am not useing a visual interface
(IE a screen) to read the majority of your posts.

 

[Neredbojias]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Sun, 22 Jul 2007 04:15:02
GMT El Kabong scribed:

I dunno, N. maybe I should have been but, to be honest, I wasn't...

Whaaaa?!! I'm flabbergasted! Guess I owe Nigel an apology. Might ruin
my image, though...

probably because I've never had a site successful enough to attract
6,000 unique visitors per day (300/.05) (I'm small potatoes.)

Hah! I'm smaller than that, bub! -And in spite of my magnetic
personality.

However, after checking stats for most of my 82 sites, I could only
come up with 10 visitors using browsers other than IE6 or 7, FF, or
Safari. Add that to the fact that, realistically, only about 1 out of
50 visitors ever becomes a cash customer, (which isn't too bad a close
rate,)

No,I'd say not at all a bad rate, 1 out of 50 (even if it sounds like it
came from Star Trek) could make you a rich man someday should you hit on
the right product in that venue.

it's doubtful that any of the 10 "brand Xers" were lost sales

anyway.

That's not to say that those 10 visitors were *unable* to view the
pages as presented, just that the sites weren't *optimized* for their
brand X browsers. But guess what! They're most likely used to that
because the majority of the sites they visit are not going to be
optimized for their off-the-wall software either.

No, when my client is looking at doubled or tripled costs for his
site's design in order to appeal to a handful of nerds who are more
interested in research (or just being weird) than actually shopping,
he'll usually opt to ignore those visitors using the geekware. It just
boils down to a combination of diminished return on investment and
good business sense.

We'll leave the experimental stuff to the folks who don't have
anything else to do with their time or money. After they get it
debugged and standardized, we'll jump all over it. I realize that,
being concerned with the absolute correctness of design as this group
is, (appropriately,) it isn't likely anyone here will agree with my
POV, but C'est la vie! I will survive.

But thanks, N, for the vote of confidence... even if it was misplaced.

Well don't unsaddle the burro yet, gringo. I very much agree with your
sentiments on diminished return and good business sense. Yes, an author
_should_ do everything he reasonably can to make a good, standards-
compliant, and even accessibility-cognizant page. However, the keyword
is "reasonably" and what's reasonable to a sub-par author is probably not
reasonable to an adept author. Furthermore, given the sad state of the
standards themselves and of the browsers compliance to said standards, I
think we're a long way from _reasonably_ expecting a universally near-
perfect page from anyone.

 

[Ben C]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Sat, 21 Jul 2007 19:35:22
GMT nice.guy.nige scribed:

[...]
No, when my client is looking at doubled or tripled costs for his site's
design

How do you work that out? How can it possibly cost less to "design" for
all the bugs and unspecified behaviour in IE than to start with a
(relatively) stable platform like Firefox or Safari for which you have
available such powerful tools as specifications and logic?

in order to appeal to a handful of nerds who are more interested in
research (or just being weird) than actually shopping, he'll usually
opt to ignore those visitors using the geekware. It just boils down to
a combination of diminished return on investment and good business
sense.

No, it's very poor business sense to work with bad tools and in a stupid
way because you can't see past the immediate goal.

Even once you have managed to concoct a tag soup that works on some
version of IE, what reason is there to believe it will continue to work
on even the next minor revision? How difficult will it be to fix if it's
a mess thrown together to target a particular browser by people who
think that reading specs and understanding things is only for "nerds
doing research"?

 

[El Kabong]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Sat, 21 Jul 2007 19:35:22
GMT nice.guy.nige scribed:

While the city slept, El Kabong ([email protected]) feverishly
typed...
In fact, why waste time designing for browsers that stats show
are used by less than 5% of Web visitors?

[...]
No, when my client is looking at doubled or tripled costs for his site's
design

How do you work that out? How can it possibly cost less to "design" for
all the bugs and unspecified behaviour in IE than to start with a
(relatively) stable platform like Firefox or Safari for which you have
available such powerful tools as specifications and logic?

in order to appeal to a handful of nerds who are more interested in
research (or just being weird) than actually shopping, he'll usually
opt to ignore those visitors using the geekware. It just boils down to
a combination of diminished return on investment and good business
sense.

No, it's very poor business sense to work with bad tools and in a stupid
way because you can't see past the immediate goal.

Even once you have managed to concoct a tag soup that works on some
version of IE, what reason is there to believe it will continue to work
on even the next minor revision? How difficult will it be to fix if it's
a mess thrown together to target a particular browser by people who
think that reading specs and understanding things is only for "nerds
doing research"?

Time is literally money when designing for payment and the key to staying
within the tightly bid budget is "stay generic". Since most PC and Mac
buyers use the machine as it came out of the box, they are my "primary" (not
"only" just primary) target, they are the group for whom I design. Feedback
comes to me from some trusted acquaintances and needed adjustments made but
I just don't waste my time or my client's money trying to ensure that the
freaks using the latest weirdware are happy.

Thanks to all for the advice, but I'm back to my lurker's corner.

El

 

[dorayme]

Time is literally money when designing for payment and the key to staying
within the tightly bid budget is "stay generic". Since most PC and Mac
buyers use the machine as it came out of the box, they are my "primary" (not
"only" just primary) target, they are the group for whom I design. Feedback
comes to me from some trusted acquaintances and needed adjustments made but
I just don't waste my time or my client's money trying to ensure that the
freaks using the latest weirdware are happy.

Thanks to all for the advice, but I'm back to my lurker's corner.

You started well with some good points about beta versions and
busy practical web designing. Then, of course, someone came in
with self justifying stats and you responded (not making clear it
was the Beta versions that were the focus) and of course, Ben
made valid points about designing costs that may or may not be
quite relevant to your actual practice.

 

[Ben C]

You started well with some good points about beta versions and
busy practical web designing. Then, of course, someone came in
with self justifying stats and you responded (not making clear it
was the Beta versions that were the focus) and of course, Ben
made valid points about designing costs that may or may not be
quite relevant to your actual practice.

I'd forgotten what the original discussion was about actually (or wasn't
paying attention). I just lurched into action to defend the doctors from
the pastry cooks.

 

[Toby A Inkster]

Ever read Brooks' "The Mythical Man-Month"?

Yes, yes -- but a very long time ago.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
[Geek of HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python/Apache/Linux]
[OS: Linux 2.6.12-12mdksmp, up 32 days, 12:29.]

Parsing an HTML Table with PEAR's XML_HTTPSax3
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/blog/2007/07/20/html-table-parsing/

 

[Travis Newbury]

I don't see what browsers have to do with it at all, unless they start
having native Flash support. Until then it's the work of the plug-in to
deal with it.

The browser has EVERYTHING to do with it. The browser needs to open
better communications with the plugin so (for example) pressing"crl+"
will let the plugin know that the user wants to change the font size,
then Flash can do that.

 

[rf]

Yes, yes -- but a very long time ago.

That would be, er, a month ago?


Trivia: A project team I once worked beside would consider the odd man month
to be as trivial as an extended Friday Lunch down at the pub. The budget was
two hundred man *years*. Went over budget by thirty or fourty years IIRC

Other trivia: The consultant "project leader" was an IBM import, at a cost
of $AU1M+ per year, and that was back in the 70's when beers were worth a
couple or few to the $.

 

[Bergamot]

The browser has EVERYTHING to do with it. The browser needs to open
better communications with the plugin so (for example) pressing"crl+"
will let the plugin know that the user wants to change the font size,
then Flash can do that.

You mean like this?
http://reefscape.net/?p=4

BTW, I think this has just as much to do with the browser as with how
the Flash movie is authored, but I'm no Flash expert so you can tell me.

This type of functionality is something that should be built into the
Flash player (among other usability things like killing animations), but
it apparently must also be "permitted" by the author. *That* is a huge
obstacle to overcome. I don't see it happening in my lifetime.

 

[Travis Newbury]

You mean like this?http://reefscape.net/?p=4

This is a work around that provides some of the functionality you are
looking for. But until there is better communication from the
browsers side, we are stuck with flimsy work arounds.

BTW, I think this has just as much to do with the browser as with how
the Flash movie is authored, but I'm no Flash expert so you can tell me.

This example? Nothing to do with the browser and everything to do
with javascript and Flash.

This type of functionality is something that should be built into the
Flash player (among other usability things like killing animations), but
it apparently must also be "permitted" by the author. *That* is a huge
obstacle to overcome. I don't see it happening in my lifetime.

Flash is a visual medium, I would rather not dumb it down and take
the visual part away. But, here is a good site to look at what it is
doing as far as accesibility is concerned:

http://www.webaim.org/techniques/flash/

In the future I see both the browsers and the flash player getting
better at accessibility. But I also believe that the web will
continue it's trend towards MORE (smarter) multimedia rather than
less.

 

[Travis Newbury]

This type of functionality is something that should be built into the
Flash player (among other usability things like killing animations), but
it apparently must also be "permitted" by the author. *That* is a huge
obstacle to overcome. I don't see it happening in my lifetime.

Most Flash developers are idiots. I agree with you, you will not see
that happen in you life

 

[Bergamot]

In the future I see both the browsers and the flash player getting
better at accessibility.

A lot will still depend on the author, though, and I'm not optimistic
about that mindset changing.

But I also believe that the web will
continue it's trend towards MORE (smarter) multimedia rather than
less.

"Smarter" is debatable, but I don't doubt more is coming. I just don't
want that junk forced on me. Except for an occasional webcast, I have
little use for anything moving around my screen, or any noise coming out
of the speakers. Plenty of other people feel the same way I do.

 

[Travis Newbury]

"Smarter" is debatable, but I don't doubt more is coming. I just don't
want that junk forced on me. Except for an occasional webcast, I have
little use for anything moving around my screen, or any noise coming out
of the speakers. Plenty of other people feel the same way I do.

Yes there are plenty of people that don't want a fancy web. Some by
choice, some because of reasons beyond their control. But at the same
time there is an equally large number of people that either want all
of the fancy stuff or never really thought about it and are fine with
it either way. The web is a very big place, and as much as you do not
want to be forced to watch this, I do not want to be told we can't do
it because you can't use it, (or just don't want to) Neither side of
this argument should dictate to the other what the web should be
like. The only logical, and fair way to control the web is to not
control it. Let the free market deal with the issue.

I believe in the greed of humans in general. If a site in a
particular format (fancy or not) would be profitable, then someone
will build it. I have absolutely no doubt of this. We don't need a
law to govern this. An open market that allows people to profit from
it is all that is needed.

You and I will probably never agree what the perfect web would be
like. And neither you nor I should be able to dictate to the other
how they have to use the web. If a particular site does not please
one of us, then complain, leave, go to a competitor, what ever. We
can ask the site owner to change, but do not dictate to the site owner
he HAS to change his site to accommodate one of us.

 

[Travis Newbury]

A lot will still depend on the author, though, and I'm not optimistic
about that mindset changing.

The author has a huge responsibility in this, and as more true
developers (as opposed to artists) start to populate the multi media
world then you will see this start to change.

 

[Bergamot]

The web is a very big place, and as much as you do not
want to be forced to watch this, I do not want to be told we can't do
it because you can't use it, (or just don't want to)

I don't recall saying that you should, either. ISTM, however, that as
more sites jump on this multimedia/make-every-freakin'-thing-interactive
bandwagon, there are fewer good alternatives out there for those of us
who just want plain old uncluttered usable info without the glitz.

For example: I frequented a well-known weather site for several years,
but at some point it seemed more interested in having me watch
non-weather related videos and ads than showing me anything about (gasp)
*weather*. The site I use now isn't "pretty" but it's got great info and
they don't make me jump through hoops to get to it.

It took me weeks to find any site with sufficient local info that wasn't
a real PITA to use. Why should this be so hard?

 

[El Kabong]

For example: I frequented a well-known weather site for several years,
but at some point it seemed more interested in having me watch
non-weather related videos and ads than showing me anything about (gasp)
*weather*. The site I use now isn't "pretty" but it's got great info and
they don't make me jump through hoops to get to it.

It took me weeks to find any site with sufficient local info that wasn't
a real PITA to use. Why should this be so hard?

Oh, man! Did you hit the nail on the top with that one.

That trend goes way beyond Web sites unfortunately. Software also suffers
from the "be-all-to-all" syndrome. MusicMatch Jukebox started out as a
fantastic little tool for ripping, & burning, but mostly managing music
files. It was wonderful... easy to use and loaded quickly. Now, Yahoo owns
it and they couldn't care less about whether or not I can manage my files,
print my playlists, or load my e280. All they want to do is sell me crap
music that no one else wants to buy either. Now a pop-up nag screen insists
that I download the latest version of their bloatware and I don't want it.
Will they give me a "Don't show this anymore" checkbox? What do you think?

This is a typical situation, brought on by desperate marketing grads, who
picked what they thought would be a soft career and found out they would
actually have to compete for eyeballs and ears. The only way they think they
can get those is with garbage gimmicks, whether it's Web gadgets or pop-ups,
pop-unders, flash movies, tricky clicks that don't lead to the info you
expected... anything to make you look.

And all it does is make me mad.

This is still a rant, right? Hope so or I'm OT.

El