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WebWord Weblog Posting Posting Date: February 22, 2003 ESPN redesigns with standards (Zeldman) -- "ESPN.com has redesigned using CSS layout. For now, the retooling is limited to the front page. Once it’s been fine-tuned, the approach will work its way into the rest of the vast site."
Reader Comments...
If I was redirected to their upgrade page I'd be rather put off. There are better ways to pursuade people to upgrade than to call them "non compliant" and shut them out. I'd much rather they display the page normally, while inserting a clear disclaimer at the top that links to a page with more information. e.g., let me see for myself that the site doesn't display properly. Explain that my browser is five years old and tell me how I'll benefit from a newer browser. Extend a helping hand instead of a slap in the face. Why is code compliance so often mingled with arrogance? It's funny that people who choose not to upgrade are offered a lite version. I like the tabled-riddled lit version a *lot* more than the CSS site. It's far less cluttered and looks fine.
It's quite reasonable to tell users they're using an obsolete / deficient browser, and quite reasonable not to spend time pandering to those who won't upgrade. Betamax users had to spend considerable time and money switching to VHS if they wanted to see the latest movies on videotape. Upgrading to a decent browser takes a lot less time and costs virtually nothing. The Web has changed. In the mid-90s a lot of browsers were slugging it out for market share and all had bugs / deficiencies. If you wanted to be seen you had to cater for these. Now one pretty good browser dominates and there are plenty of other good browsers. Is it fair to users of good browsers (the majority) to bloat your pages with work-rounds?
While the ESPN site may technically follow standards, I would hardly say their markup is in the spirit of the standards... Why should a site dealing mainly in stats and articles (I don't frequent the site so correct me if I'm wrong) set Javascript as a prerequisite? It seems the web team were approaching the site as a programming exercise as opposed to a vehicle for information delivery. Same old. The site also looks terrible in Opera 6 to the point of obscuring and covering content, so standards or not, users of that browser already have a barrier to entry. Posted by: Chris on February 23, 2003 10:39 AM
Philip, I catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Posted by: Some people just don't get it on February 23, 2003 11:49 AM
The redesign goes halfway towards doing the right thing - fewer tables in favour of more CSS, but the mark-up isn't very well structured, with spacers galore, lists not marked up as lists, and a messy collection of inline style/script. As for upgrade messages, well if your (X)HTML is bodge-free you can simply let older browsers show an unstyled version, as also displayed by text-only browsers & mobile devices' simple web browsers. That's how mark-up was intended to work, and it works really well if you start with getting the basics right. Nowadays I reckon most Netscape 4 users have it inflicted upon them by their misguided/lazy/sadistic IT department and would've loved to have upgraded years ago, so upgrade messages must seem like cruel taunts.
> Netscape 4 users have it inflicted upon them by their misguided/lazy/sadistic IT department I know several people who choose to use Netscape 4. They upgraded to Netscape 6, hated it (because of the different look & tons of AOL plugs), and went back to 4. They don't use IE because they hate Microsoft. When they encounter a must-use site that doesn't work, they will load Internet Explorer to use that one site. Personally, I hate Wired's "compliant" redesign. IE6 for XP (from home and office), doesn't display the middle white column correctly (where article summaries are displayed). There is no white left margin. The first letter of each line bleeds into the adjoining left black column. Resizing the text doesn't help. I know how the layout is supposed to look, but it doesn't look that way for me.
Re "more flies with honey than vinegar", ESPN's "upgrade" page is informative and polite, and tells users of deficient browsers that they will get more out of the web if they upgrade. My only criticisms of it are: I might also be tempted to add "It would be unfair to users of good browsers (the vast majority) to make our pages slower-loading by bloating them with work-rounds for the deficiencies of obsolete browsers." Posted by: Philip Chalmers on February 24, 2003 05:45 AM
I find the page insulting. YOU ARE NON-COMPLIANT. What kind of greeting is that? Definitely vinegar. Posted by: Betty on February 24, 2003 11:11 AM
Take the Wired.com approach. Show the user how broken the page looks and stick a disclaimer at the top of the page. Let the user decide if upgrading is worth their time and trouble. Show me evidence that an bullying upgrade page spurs people to upgrade. It doesn't. It only makes them mad. "Note: Wired News content is accessible to all versions of every browser. However, this browser may not support basic Web standards, preventing the display of our site's design details. We support the mission of the Web Standards Project in the campaign encouraging users to upgrade their browsers. (Read More)" Posted by: Brad Sladebutton on February 24, 2003 11:38 AM
There's nothing wrong with telling people they're using a technically obsolete browser. However "97.8% of our visitors are using a standards-compliant browser. It appears you are not." is NOT the way to do it. The average ESPN user doesn't have a clue what "standards compliance" means probably doesn't give a flying rat's ass what it means either. Why not just say "We noticed that you're using one of the following browsers: [...] While your browser may work with a majority of the sites on the Web, it will not display our redesigned website as intended due to our more advanced technologies. For this reason, we recommend that you upgrade to one of the following newer browsers..." They couldn't have tested that upgrade page with users or else they would have realized what technoheaded baffons they were. Posted by: Joshua Kaufman on February 24, 2003 03:41 PM
More discussion at Signal vs. Noise on the language used to tell people their browser is old. Posted by: Jason Fried on February 24, 2003 05:23 PM
Comments from someone at ESPN on the Signal vs. Noise site... Posted by: John S. Rhodes on February 24, 2003 05:57 PM
Matt said: "Nowadays I reckon most Netscape 4 users have it inflicted upon them by their misguided/lazy/sadistic IT department and would've loved to have upgraded years ago, so upgrade messages must seem like cruel taunts." This is so true, unfortunately. I run into this all the time while attempting to support customers. "I can't upgrade without pissing off the wrong people - is there any way around it?" I even talked to one guy who had to put up with having JavaScript and images turned off "to reduce bandwidth use" - why bother? I was just talking with someone the other day about why it is so hard to spread the word about CSS and the good things it can do for design, and cited the arrogance of people like Zeldman and the Web Standards gang as the chief culprits. It's sad. Stop making people feel like morons, it's that simple. Posted by: Lydia on February 24, 2003 09:08 PM
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