[CLUE-Tech] Re: Browser Protest Day

[David Snyder]

Jed S. Baer wrote:

The main thing you are ranting about here is simple useability. 
 Admittedly, people are always messing around with things and I too have 
been on a site where I couldn't tell the difference between someone's 
hyperlink and and regular text.  

CSS, DOM, and JavaScript sites can make for a MUCH better user 
experience.  As a web designer and developer it gives me more options 
for things that were not heard of a few short years ago.  It allows me 
to do more on the client without always having to make round trips to 
the server, it allows me to control presentation of elements with a 
single file fore easy maintenance.  It allows me to design a look and 
feel that conveys emotion, feelings, and identity.

That being said, I also spend a lot of time thinking through my designs 
and establishing consistant standards to adhere to and stick the them. 
 This includes providing user feedback when they mouse over items (color 
chances, etc), consistant appearence of page elements such as 
hyperlinks, and more.  That's good UI design, you establish simple rules 
the user can understand and you do not confuse them by violating those 
rules.

For working in "any browser", one thing that hasn't been mentioned was 
dealing with all the various browser bugs.  The more advanced you make a 
site, the more difficult it is to code multi-browser.   I am not happy 
with simple text only layouts like you saw in the 1.0 days, I like to 
put some visual appeal on my site.  For an advanced web application, 
they can involve complex tables, XML requests through XML objects or 
iFrames, DHTML for pop-up menus, and more.

It takes a lot of trial and error to do cross browser coding.  I say 
trial and error because the browser's behavior cannot be predicted, it 
can only be seen.  You do one thing, it makes one browser happy and 
ticks of the other one, and vice versa.  That is VERY time consuming and 
frustrating - so businesses are forced to make a business decision and 
leave out audiences if coding for them isn't worth the potential 
financial gain.  It's a sad fact, but how many decision makers outside 
of the IT world do you know even know what Lynx is?  

I blame browser inconsistency on the over-abundance of Flash sites these 
days. Flash, while it is an open standard, is controlled by Macromedia. 
 Nobody has come out with competing/proprietary version of Flash, so 
Flash works and will run consistantly on any browser with the 
appropriate plug-in.  That and a lot of designers don't know good UI 
standards and the technical ramifications of the technology they use. 
 These two issues have compounded each other so a lot of sites have been 
driven towards a plug-in based world.  Ideas are not thought out at all, 
resulting in failure to provide sufficient information or presenting the 
information in a way the user cannot use it (Printing, bookmarking, 
copy/paste, etc.).  I HATE plug-in based sites, but I also understand 
why they came to be.

On your popunder ads - Unfortunately online advertizers have been so 
over-zealous that they've essentially started crapping in their own bed. 
 NOBODY I know likes popunders/popups, and they are doing a lot of 
damage to online advertizing by annoying users.  Annoyed users are not 
happy users.  To combat this, I have two things:
1.  Mozilla, it has a preferences switch that kills pop-unders dead but 
leaves the rest of JavaScript intact.
2.  A "Killer Hosts File", for some odd reason, a lot of advertizing 
goes "404" on my system... gee, maybe because I direct it to an internal 
webserver instead? :-)  If you do a popunder on me, you get added to my 
hosts file.

I can send you a copy of my killer hosts file if you wish - not the 
whole thing, just the section that swats popunders dead.

Web advertising itself has been in transition for quite some time too, 
but that's a debate beyond the scope of this conversation - a complex & 
controversial one at that.

>There was an article in today's Post/News about how difficult various
>gadgetry is becoming for many people, particularly with the high degree of
>"feature stuffing". It seems to me that the www is going in the same
>direction. And yes, there are cases where these things are good. But not
>in a basic, user/customer contact and information page. In the case I've
>just ranted about, the company is a large hosting provider, and I was
>hoping to find their TOS/AUP before sending them a spam complaint - and in
>fact, also discover if they have a published abuse address (not everyone
>has abuse at domain.tld). Is flash necessary for the presentation of that
>information? I don't think so.
>
>  
>
As to that, you should try:
http://www.abuse.net/lookup.phtml

VERY handy site - Unfortunately you're right as to having 
abuse at domain.tld not standard.  Some ISP's, Level 3 for example, usees 
spamtool at level3.net.  Other ISP's have started appending data to their 
Whois records.

I understand exactly what you mean.  It's a real pain in the butt to 
find a TOS or abuse address at times - a lot of times I wind up spamming 
several addresseswith my abuse report in hopes they will get through, be 
read, and responded to appropriately.  If you're an ISP or web host, you 
should *know* to put your abuse addresses where they can be found!

David Snyder
http://www.snydersweb.com