Re: Adjust My browser for each site?

From: John Gaskill <jg_at_info-central-usa.com>
Date: Fri 01 Mar 2002 17:34:03 -0600

John Bellstream wrote:

>Thanks for the helpful replies from this group regarding
>the use of tiny print in Web design. The explainations
>were quite interesting and answered many questions. I
>found one reply I thought would be fun to ask this group
>for their opinion on as it seems to reveal the attitude
>of the type of people who may design the useless tiny
>print sites. This person replied to me:
>
>"This is because you, the consumer, can go to your browser
>window, such as
> IE5, and VIEW | TEXT SIZE | LARGEST ...
>
>.... and make this tiny text size as *big* as you want....
>anytime, without bothering the web-designer...."
>
>While this is certainly true, as a consumer using the Web
>to make a purchase in the $4,500 range, am I expected by
>most Web designers to adjust my browser for each and
>every site I visit? Am I expected to finish the work for
>the designer?

The quoted comments of the designer you mention only
illustrate why large numbers of "beautiful or cool looking"
web sites don't do much business. As in all types of
computer programming, the end user is not necessarily
the programmer. This causes problems when the user
has no input to the design process, and the specifier of
programming is the designer, and the programmer is the
designer.

If the buyer of the design services knows little about
testing a web site for usability other than making sure
there are no broken links, s/he is likely to get a site
that is not helpful to customers.

In defense of short, but acutely sighted designers, I
would not be surprised if a large number of them do not
know that specifying a font size as 1, 2, 3 ... 7 fixes it
in the browser and no matter how LARGEST the user
makes it, the size on the screen does not change.

In other words, though their eyes might be good, they
are ignorant of how their work is used. That is not
defensible if they should know what they are doing,
but if they are only doing what they have been told or
what the program they design with does for them,
what else could you expect?


John Gaskill
jg_at_Info-Central-USA.com
http://Info-Central-USA.com





Received on Fri Mar 01 2002 - 17:34:03 CST