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Posted by Adrienne Boswell on 02/24/07 06:37
Gazing into my crystal ball I observed "Travis Newbury"
<TravisNewbury@hotmail.com> writing in news:1172071223.812415.247530
@m58g2000cwm.googlegroups.com:
> On Feb 21, 8:20 am, "Richard Formby" <newsgro...@barefile.com.au>
> wrote:
>> True. But...
> This assumes you get in the door. Remember, they just got the website
> they wanted. Why would they need to talk to you? You told them you
> wouldn't do it their way....
>
>> I certainly don't need clients who
>> think they know more about web design than I do :-)
> Oh they don't, but they know what _they_ think is cool. And would
> everyone (the big boys) be doing it if it were bad?...
> (That was a rhetorical question)
>
> I am not saying it is right. I am saying it is the real world.
>
>
>
>
In defense of myself and my boss, who I really do admire quite a bit, I
have actually gone quite a way into convincing her of certain things:
1. Site has to be CSS driven
2. Site has to use semantic markup, no presentational markup
3. Site has to use DSNless connections
4. Site has to use clean coding
5. Site cannot use javascript for everything, only to enhance the users
experience. If the script could impede a user, especially her, it's
nixed.
6. Site has to use ems or percentages (this one was really hard -
because once I told her that IE could not change the size, she REALLY
wanted it)
Battles I have not won:
1. Not everyone has the same size screen she is using (and she KNOWS
this, but still thinks everyone is/wants to be like her)
2. No one wants to use the back button, they only want to use the little
x or click on the close button. I brought up the fact that some devices
don't have "windows", but that did not deter her. She says those
without windows will open a new window anyway!
3. No one has ever gotten confused with a new window. This one is
particularly funny as she herself gets confused when a new window opens.
But, then she is also the first one to close her existing window and
wonder what happened.
4. Everyone uses IE, or at least they should. Microsoft is infallible
and even if they make a mistake, it's because they thought they made
one.
5. Firefox, Safari and Opera are for geeks, and no one uses those
browsers. Everyone surfs the same way she does, except me, but I am a
"techie", so I don't count.
6. Iframe? No problem - anything that can go in should - users are not
going to get confused and think that the Iframe content is ours, despite
the verbiage stating its not.
So, there are a few things that I have done. As far as the screen size,
I have set everything in percentages - so it looks the same in my screen
(larger resolution) as it does in hers. I have put an advisory in the
title attribute of anything that spawns new windows. I can't win every
battle and still have a job - I seriously lost a key battle and was
fired, but came back after three years and a baby. While I was gone,
someone came in a nearly everything was javascript (even plain hrefs),
and the markup was a mess of nested tables. When I came back, I
announced that I was cleaning up the entire site - I did that, and now
we are getting good SERPs again. There is still work to be done, and
convincing to be done. There probably always will be.....
--
Adrienne Boswell at Home
Arbpen Web Site Design Services
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
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