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WebWord Weblog Posting

Posting Date: September 04, 2002
 

99.9% of Websites Are Obsolete -- "We can only conclude that the company wishes its site to look exactly the same in 1995-era browsers that don't support CSS as it does in modern browsers that do. The irony is that no one beside Yahoo's management cares what Yahoo looks like. The site's tremendous success is due to the service it provides, not to the beauty of its visual design (which is non-existent)." (Comments: I couldn't pinpoint what bothered me about the article but then it finally hit me. There is a big difference between are obsolete and will be obsolete.)

 

  

Reader Comments...
 

Didn't WebWord already link to this article? I'd hate to rewrite a Zeldman rant. That Damn Google can't find it though. @#$%^&*! I know I went Filbert on his ass on some blog somewhere.

Posted by: Jack on September 4, 2002 09:51 PM

 

You're probably looking for this, Jack.

Google Search = WebWord+Zeldman

Posted by: John S. Rhodes on September 4, 2002 09:58 PM

 

Nah, this was a rant specifically about the obsolete article. Give Google a month to catch up and locate my rant.

Posted by: Jack on September 4, 2002 10:40 PM

 

Zeldman could be the next Yahoo! Given that he knows 99.9% of web sites are obsolete, he is in a position to create one hell of a great web portal, presenting us the 00.1% of the Web that is functional. Oh wait, Zeldman already is a yahoo.

Posted by: Jack on September 5, 2002 04:30 PM

 

Why do you hate Zeldman so much, Jack? Don't you consider his contributions to the field of web design and development significant or useful?

Posted by: Kung Pao on September 6, 2002 01:32 AM

 

No, I hold him responsible for perpetuating the idea that locked font sizes are OK. e.g., it's not the designer's problem.

That's the lightning rod issue I view him by, but I've also generally not been impressed with his other writings. I think he tells lazy designers what they want to hear.

Posted by: Jack on September 6, 2002 10:17 AM

 

Jack, what makes you think that the designers are fixing the font size?

The W3C makes no distinction between the behavior of a font specified in pixels, points, ems, percents or whatever other metric you may use.

Point: Most recent browsers support font resizing for any metric. Unfortunately Microsoft's Internet Explorer on Windows does not have this functionality... yet on the Mac it does.

This is not a pitch for the Mac, this is a pitch for getting all browsers to interact with markup in a consistent way.

The standard, as it would be called, is to allow text sized based on pixels to be resized. Why alienate pixels? I don't know... ask Microsoft's IE for Windows team, the Mac team got it right.

Summary: it's not the designer's fault, it's the browser manufactures fault for creating exclusionary functions.

- Nick

Posted by: Nick on September 12, 2002 03:41 PM

 

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