Good Sites - who's got some examples?

[Nicolai P. Zwar]

Isofarro wrote:

Considering you've asked the identical question at least three times in this
very thread,

I asked for websites the very people here who frequent this group and
who know more about HTML and CSS than the average joe consider good
looking websites, which is a perfectly legitimate question. While I see
that you are quick to shoot off your mouth at what you consider "tripe",
you have yet to provide a simple example of what you consider "good".
Rather telling, I would say.

its certainly evident you are attaching some importance of
design regardless of pointers to that contradiction.

Of course I am attaching some importance to design, I'd be a moron not
too. Design matters, whether you think it does or doesn't. It's merely
your black and white way of approaching the issue and to part the web
world into those to whom design is irrelevant (e.g. you) and those to
whom it is more imporant than content that's ludicrous.

An idiot and his money are soon parted.

Indeed, and any new cereal company on the market trying to position
their new chocolate chip cereal and taking shares from Kellog's would
part with their money very quickly if they were to sell it in a boring
gray box made from recylced cardboard, no matter how legible the
contents would be.

The design of a website is irrelevant, all that matters is its content and
its readability.

Says you. But that's a far cry from what goes on in the real world. How
would you desing a site to promote the next New Line movie? How would
you design a site to lure MTV teenies to buy the latest CD from a soon
to be big starlet? How would you design the homepage of an advertising
agency? If design doesn't matter, you wouldn't need web designers, in
fact, all these sites and any other site could more or less look the
same. Design doesn't matter? Yeah, right.

Anything that works properly on the world wide web is a
good design.

Your taste is shockingly all inclusive. But to each its own.

So what website do you like for its Content-Expiry header?

Now that _is_ a ridiculous question.

 

[Nicolai P. Zwar]

Isofarro wrote:

Its quoted right above. Try reading it, and not being distracted by the
shiny blinky gee-gaws in your taskbar.

I have read it and Mark said nothing of the kind. Mark argued that
design is very important, not, that a web site shouldn't work properly.

Try reading the above, or comprehending. Both of them are failing you
miserably.

Rather ironic statement, coming from a person whose grammar is obviously
failing him. It is not the least bit evident to what the pronoun "them"
is referring to in your last sentence. Anyone knows?

You do need to do something about these magpie-like tendancies you've
deluded yourself with. Its not healthy you know.

Anyone ever tell you that you are quite a presumptuous fellow? Ah, yes,
that's right, I did.

 

[Matthias Gutfeldt]

Pot. Kettle. Black. But then you have the tendancy to be distracted by shiny
object, so perhaps you haven't grasped that yet.

Excuse me for interrupting this nice little fight, but couldn't you
folks do this somewhere else? alt.flame looks like the perfect spot.


Matthias

 

[Wipkip]

Dylan Parry wrote:
Dylan Parry
http://www.webpageworkshop.co.uk - FREE Web tutorials and references

Nice to see your site is growing nicely.

 

[Dylan Parry]

Nice to see your site is growing nicely.

Cheers. It's coming along slowly - I have another 50 pages planned at the
moment, with say 80 more to come shortly afterwards. *sigh* I must get
back to my coding, otherwise the evil HTML codes will frown upon me

 

[Wipkip]

Cheers. It's coming along slowly - I have another 50 pages planned at
the moment, with say 80 more to come shortly afterwards. *sigh* I
must get back to my coding, otherwise the evil HTML codes will frown
upon me

Now about that php section........

 

[Dylan Parry]

Now about that php section........

Ack! Alas, the gods do not like me. Give me a few months, and then maybe
I'll find the time to start it! There is one planned, I assure you.

 

[Isofarro]

Then you are out of touch with how most web sites are
being done for corporations.

I can see the problems it is creating - you are oblivious it seems. No
matter, in a few years you will understand, or go out of business ignoring
it.

The appearance of the site is used to enhance the image
of the corporation, just like print ads are used.

If that is so, then you are already out of a job. Lucky you. I'm sure if a
corporation is serious about this, they would hire proper design agencies,
not some twit claiming to be a web designer.

It is what
corporations are asking for and it is what they are getting.

Seems like you believe they know more about the web than you do. Ah well, in
the land of the blind, the guide dog is king.

Most corporate web sites that I have visited have a very
strong design element.

Most of the ones I have seen are inaccessible. That's not good public
relations in anyone's book.

It is obvious on these sites that
a lot of time went into determining how the site looks.

At the expense of visitor requirements, no doubt.

This almost always involves the use of JavaScript and
frequently the use of Flash.

So that always involves excluding the public - and that's good?

 

[Isofarro]

On what basis do you now claim Mark allegedly believes that a web site
should not work properly on the world wide web?

Its quoted right above. Try reading it, and not being distracted by the
shiny blinky gee-gaws in your taskbar.

If you don't believe that, I wonder who would hire you to design a web
site.

They certainly wouldn't be hiring a web designer if what you proclaim is
correct. They'd have money better spent hiring a proper design agency
instead.

You have still not understood. You are simplistically shooting against
those who put design ahead of content because it makes it easier for you
to argue against it.

Try reading the above, or comprehending. Both of them are failing you
miserably.

But if, on the other hand, you actually go ahead and claim that the
design of a corn flakes box, a car, a magazine, or a web site has no
bearing on its success, than you seem pretty clueless about human
psychology.

You do need to do something about these magpie-like tendancies you've
deluded yourself with. Its not healthy you know.

 

[Isofarro]

Tell that to a corporate CEO looking to hire you to build a site for him
and you'll soon be outside looking in. All that matters to *me* is what
the client wants.

Considering the client seems to know more about the web than you do, you are
probably right spending your apprenticeship years with him. Not that it
will get you very far.

If he wants a flash splash page I can give him the
reasons why this isn't a good idea, but if he's hell bent on a flash
splash page then that's what he shall have. His money is entirely
"relevant" to me ;-)

Money over quality. Why am I not surprised.

 

[Isofarro]

Isofarro evidently does not care for this aspect of web design.

I don't believe in extorting money from people by delivering something that
obviously does not work. I prefer quality solutions at a fair price, not
this gouging crap you guys seem to prefer.

Isofarro wants these complex sites that do not work for
every browser and user platform to go away.

I want you to do your job properly and professionally. That is asking too
much of you, it seems.

It isn't
going to happen as long as people keep asking for complex
sites and people keep building them.

Now you've identified yourself as part of the problem - that be progress.

 

[Daniel R. Tobias]

....more blather snipped...

If you believe that, then that would be good grounds never to consider
hiring you, and chose an expert design agency instead.

Several of you are going overboard with the hyperbole. To believe some
of this rhetoric, some of you think that content is all that matters and
visual design should be completely abolished, while others think that
good looks are everything and it's irrelevant whether there's any
content, structure, or accessibility. Both positions are straw men; a
more balanced view is that these elements -- content, structure, design,
and accessibility -- are all important to a well-done Web site.

That's not to say that there isn't room for debate about the relative
importance of the different elements, and the order in which they should
be addressed in the course of designing and developing a site. My own
preference, from a logical structuralist point of view, is:

1) Content: start by knowing what information the site is intended to
convey.

2) Structure: develop a logical framework that presents the content
sensibly, with reasonable divisions into sections and pages, and a
well-thought-out navigation system.

3) Visual Design: Once the content and structure are decided, create a
nice-looking appearance for it.

4) Bells-And-Whistles: After all of this is complete, it's now the time
to contemplate adding a few well-chosen enhancements to add extra
"pizzazz" to the site, taking care to ensure they degrade gracefully for
users not supporting whatever browser features may be required for them.
Since the site is already content-rich, structured, and attractive
before these features are added, there's less danger that the site will
collapse into complete unuseability if the enhancements don't work for
some user.

5) Final Tweaking: With a complete, functional site, conduct whatever
further testing is needed to check for unexpected problems in widely
varied viewing situations; does it trigger bugs in some browser
versions? Does everything degrade gracefully when scripting, images, or
other features are disabled? Is the alternative content usable for
text-mode users? Does all the code validate? Hopefully, if the earlier
steps are done sensibly, there will be few problems at this stage, but
minor changes might be desirable.

Unfortunately, many designers these days prefer a less logical sequence,
something like:

1) Graphical Design: Decide on a "look" for the site and mock it up in
Photoshop files or Powerpoint slides to be shown to roomfuls of
non-technical people in suits and ties. Go through many rounds of
nitpicky changes, without at any point considering any non-visual aspect
of the design, before arriving at a final, pixel-precise appearance to
be handed down to the technical developers as if from Mount Sinai.

2) Bells and Whistles: Concurrently with the graphical design, decide on
the "snazzy" stuff the site must do, like "There needs to be a Flash
intro," and "All the links need to come up in pop-up windows with all
the controls disabled, including scrollbars and resizing." The people
who decide on all of this don't need to have a clue how it's actually
implemented, just that they saw something similar once on somebody
else's site.

3) Structure: Come up with a structure (logical or illogical) for the
site which fits the graphical design. If the design has exactly five
graphical buttons at the top of the page, this means that exactly five
main sections need to be created in the site, for instance, and their
names need to have the correct number of letters to fit in the buttons.
At this point, the techies (not necessarily *very* technical, just
capable of using Dreamweaver) create code that duplicates the look that
the graphical artists created (generally requiring fixed-pixel-width
tables and pixel-sized fonts, because the artists' conception doesn't
allow the slightest bit of wiggle room for resolution differences).
There still isn't any actual content; all the text is probably the silly
pseudo-Latin "Lorem ipsum..." piece that drifts around among such designers.

4) Content: Finally, "pour" the actual content into the design and
structure developed above, mangling it as necessary to get it to fit.
Long articles, or even moderate-sized ones, might have to be chopped up
into many bite-size pieces to fit into page designs with hardcoded
widths and heights. If the design can't easily accomodate some of the
content, throw the content out rather than change the design. If this
is a site redesign, and there's already lots of interesting and useful
content in the site, throw it all out; eventually, some of it might be
brought back in, but it's too much work to try to port it all over to
the new design right away, and it would be unthinkable to let anything
from the old site remain unchanged because its look would clash with the
new stuff.

5) After-the-fact fixes: Once the site is live, listen occasionally to
user feedback, like "The site came up as a completely blank page in
Netscape," and, if you feel like it, perhaps make changes to attempt to
fix some of these problems. If you don't feel like it, just say
"Changing the design would be too difficult and expensive, and besides,
hardly anybody uses that browser," and leave it alone without even
looking into what the real problem is.

 

[Isofarro]

Isofarro wrote:



I asked for websites the very people here who frequent this group and
who know more about HTML and CSS than the average joe consider good
looking websites, which is a perfectly legitimate question.

About as legitimate as to what their favourite HTTP response code is.

While I see
that you are quick to shoot off your mouth at what you consider "tripe",
you have yet to provide a simple example of what you consider "good".
Rather telling, I would say.

Rather telling that there's a lot of crap out there masquerading as web
design. Most of it done by people like you - but you'd probably be proud of
that wasteland.

Says you. But that's a far cry from what goes on in the real world. How
would you desing a site to promote the next New Line movie?

I'd spend more time making the movie worth watching, rather than overhyping
some crap.

How would
you design a site to lure MTV teenies to buy the latest CD from a soon
to be big starlet?

I'd spend more time making sure the music was worth listening to, instead of
overhyping some cover-song rip off tart.

If design doesn't matter, you wouldn't need web designers,

We don't need your sort of web designers.

in
fact, all these sites and any other site could more or less look the
same. Design doesn't matter? Yeah, right.

Good. now you are getting it. Web design is only an excuse you use to extort
money out of other people. That's why every Frontpage drag-and-drop
operator is currently a "professional" web designer.

Your taste is shockingly all inclusive.

Much better to cater for real interest, rather than attract a cow-herd with
shiny objects.

Now that _is_ a ridiculous question.

Right. Now apply the analogy correctly back to your original question, and
it all fits in nicely. A content-expiry date, like a design, complements
the content. Nothing more.

 

[Isofarro]

I have read it and Mark said nothing of the kind.

Try it again, this time try comprehension too.

Rather ironic statement, coming from a person whose grammar is obviously
failing him. It is not the least bit evident to what the pronoun "them"
is referring to in your last sentence. Anyone knows?

Them would be "reading the above", and "comprehending". English doesn't seem
to be a language you understand?

Anyone ever tell you that you are quite a presumptuous fellow? Ah, yes,
that's right, I did.

Pot. Kettle. Black. But then you have the tendancy to be distracted by shiny
object, so perhaps you haven't grasped that yet.

 

[=?ISO-8859-15?Q?Fran=E7ois_de_Dardel?=]

I am pretty sure Subaru did a little research before switching to this

format. And they found that they sold more cards pissing off the anti-
javascript people then they did when they had a plain Jane site.

Nothing wrong with JS. If it's not on, probably you can still see
something on that page.

But on my display (1024 x 820) their page fills roughly 1/4 of the
available screen space, and just looks ridiculous. Ever heard of
"elastic" HTML ?

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_de_Dardel?=]

[1] for example: http://web.utk.edu/~gwynne/maslow.htm

Your point would be?

The requested URL /~gwynne/maslow.htm was not found on this server.

 

[Nicolai P. Zwar]

Nicolai P. Zwar wrote:




Try it again, this time try comprehension too.

Why do you evade and don't just show where Mark said that he doesn't
believe a website should work properly? Because you cannot, I reckon.

Them would be "reading the above", and "comprehending". English doesn't seem
to be a language you understand?

Another, even more ironic statement, coming from a person who obviously
believes that "Both of reading the above and comprehending are failing
you" is a correct English sentence. You don't seem particularly
qualified to give advice on language comprehension.

Pot. Kettle. Black. But then you have the tendancy to be distracted by shiny
object, so perhaps you haven't grasped that yet.

Further evidence for your presumptuousness.

 

[Nicolai P. Zwar]

Isofarro wrote:

About as legitimate as to what their favourite HTTP response code is.

Easily as legitimate, but more interesting because design is far more a
matter of taste than HTTP response codes.

Rather telling that there's a lot of crap out there masquerading as web
design. Most of it done by people like you

On what basis do you make the unsubstantiated and presumptuous claim
that most of the web design is made by people like me?

- but you'd probably be proud of
that wasteland.

On what basis do you draw this unsubstantiated and presumptuous
conclusion, an erroneous one at that?

I'd spend more time making the movie worth watching, rather than overhyping
some crap.

That's not the job of the web designer, but of the
director/producer/writer etc. You seem to be unclear about the issue.

I'd spend more time making sure the music was worth listening to, instead of
overhyping some cover-song rip off tart.

That's not the job of the web designer either, but of the producer,
composer, and lyricist. You seem to be unclear about the issue.

We don't need your sort of web designers.

For whom do you claim to speak when you use the pronoun "we"?

Good. now you are getting it. Web design is only an excuse you use to extort
money out of other people.

Who is extorting any money from anybody via web design? Got a few
relevant examples to back up your completely ridiculous and
unsubstantiated assumption?

That's why every Frontpage drag-and-drop
operator is currently a "professional" web designer.




Much better to cater for real interest, rather than attract a cow-herd with
shiny objects.

Do what you wish. It's a free world.

Right. Now apply the analogy correctly back to your original question, and
it all fits in nicely. A content-expiry date, like a design, complements
the content. Nothing more.

The question is ridiculous because unlike design, Content-Expiry headers
are not really a matter of taste.

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_de_Dardel?=]

Most corporate web sites that I have visited have a very
strong design element. It is obvious on these sites that
a lot of time went into determining how the site looks.
This almost always involves the use of JavaScript and
frequently the use of Flash.

Yes, and most corporate web sites tell the visitor why they are the best
in the world. I, as visitor, am not the least interested why this
company (claims it) is the best in the world. However, I am interested
in seeing what products they offer, what are the characteristics of
these products, how these products work, etc.

It is nice to see a tasteful layout - provided it loads very quickly -
but at the end of the day, it is the value of the information that counts.

 

[Liz]

In message <[email protected]>

There are other markets other than food genius.... Hence the sentence
"Not _every_ product is marketed to _every_ singe consumer in the world.

The sentence did not say "NO product in the world" , it said, "Not every
product" Now don't you feel like a dope....

In any case, not every food is marketed to every consumer.

Liz