D
dorayme
Some more reflections on the zen of the practical art of website making
for those who get information from paying clients. (I mean, while we
wait for visitors at alt.html ... I know some of you severe types prefer
silence. Sorry, not in my nature. <g>)
There is the idea that some people have, that information that is given
to you by a client has some actual structure, hidden perhaps. But this
is mostly not so. What the average webshoe gets all too often is
fragmented missives from clients.
This is not the slightest bit of criticism of clients. What they wish to
convey is often quite clear. It is just that there is no real hidden
form to it. And, often enough, to look at the other side of this coin,
sometimes the client does give you the information in a structured form
but one which can be safely thrown out as they mostly do not know the
peculiar requirements of the website.
The safest idea is to suppose that somehow what the client wishes is
that whoever visits the website can answer (counterfactually if
necessary) some imaginary list of sensible questions. How the client
conveys this so called information to the webshoe is simply vague,
mysterious, intuitive, chaotic.
Everything changes when the webshoe finally is satisfied he has all he
needs in this chaotic form. It is his job, then, to give it structure.
There is no hidden structure. It is a gift to be bestowed on this chaos
so that the audience is spared staring into some Utter Unknown.
We have had examples time and again of folk on these usenet forums
saying they want to let people know such and such, and please, what is
the best way to do this? And they get answers, often with offers of
quite different semantic markup. Often, the answers are equally good or
there is not much to tell them apart in effectiveness for communication.
for those who get information from paying clients. (I mean, while we
wait for visitors at alt.html ... I know some of you severe types prefer
silence. Sorry, not in my nature. <g>)
There is the idea that some people have, that information that is given
to you by a client has some actual structure, hidden perhaps. But this
is mostly not so. What the average webshoe gets all too often is
fragmented missives from clients.
This is not the slightest bit of criticism of clients. What they wish to
convey is often quite clear. It is just that there is no real hidden
form to it. And, often enough, to look at the other side of this coin,
sometimes the client does give you the information in a structured form
but one which can be safely thrown out as they mostly do not know the
peculiar requirements of the website.
The safest idea is to suppose that somehow what the client wishes is
that whoever visits the website can answer (counterfactually if
necessary) some imaginary list of sensible questions. How the client
conveys this so called information to the webshoe is simply vague,
mysterious, intuitive, chaotic.
Everything changes when the webshoe finally is satisfied he has all he
needs in this chaotic form. It is his job, then, to give it structure.
There is no hidden structure. It is a gift to be bestowed on this chaos
so that the audience is spared staring into some Utter Unknown.
We have had examples time and again of folk on these usenet forums
saying they want to let people know such and such, and please, what is
the best way to do this? And they get answers, often with offers of
quite different semantic markup. Often, the answers are equally good or
there is not much to tell them apart in effectiveness for communication.