[Gllug] [OT]Reforming wayward web designers

[David Damerell]

On Thursday, 7 Oct 2004, Garry Heaton wrote:
>David Damerell wrote:
>>This is not a new fact; however, from my point of view, the fact that
>>the DDA may well force these idiots to select more usable designs can
>>only be good.
>Can you please explain why the desire to produce anything more than a plain
>vanilla 2/3 column layout renders one an 'idiot'?

Because, as originally mentioned, users simply do not have the time or
the inclination to contend with the idiosyncracies of individual
Websites. People don't browse the Web to look at Web design.

>Attractive, original
>layouts with appealing graphics may not be the norm in your industry but
>they certainly are in the commercial world.

Attractive layouts are not. Most commercial Websites look like they
were designed by acid-crazed wombats. Original, certainly; which is
annoying, since once again no-one wants every Website they look at to
be different.

I observe that in a much more mature industry - book publishing - most
of the output is single-column, black on white, with no fancy
layout. Of course they have learned that people read books for the
words, not for the typesetting; eventually one can only hope that
people publishing on the Web learn the same lesson.

>Since when was restricting a craftsman's range of options a sign of
>technological advance?

Technological advance or no, it certainly can be a good thing. In the
early days of desktop publishing it would be been enormously easier if
people were restricted to one font, one colour, perhaps at most two
sizes of text, given no options to rotate or scale anything, banned
from using clipart (still a persistent problem); then we might
actually have been able to concentrate on what they had to say.

-- 
David Damerell <damerell at chiark.greenend.org.uk> flcl?
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