Posted by David Segall on 07/05/07 13:14

Sherm Pendley <spamtrap@dot-app.org> wrote:

>David Segall <david@address.invalid> writes:
>
>> The post
>> that I responded to did not qualify "any resolution" and it typifies a
>> number of posts in similar threads that make pious statements about
>> how a web page should be designed
>
>Pious? Spare me. Piety concerns religious belief - the belief that a
>thing is true, when in reality it's not known for a fact whether it's
>true or not.
>
>The people making pious statements are the ones who claim to know all
>about random Joe User visiting their site - what browser he's using,
>whether he's disabled JavaScript, etc. They believe in something that
>has not been proven as fact.
>
>Advocating "any resolution" design is in fact the exact opposite of a
>pious statement. It's a recognition that I *don't* know anything about
>my visitors or their browsers, and a refusal to delude myself with an
>irrational belief that I do know these things.
It is "religious" because it substitutes one irrational belief with
another one. It is true that you cannot predict how your site will be
viewed. That does not make it possible to design a site with CSS and
HTML that is usable by a visitor using a mobile phone and one using a
wide screen monitor. I used the word pious because the advocates seem
to believe that "any resolution" is more virtuous than accepting a
doable range of window sizes.

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