Posted by Andy Dingley on 01/23/08 17:19

On 23 Jan, 15:23, Travis Newbury <TravisNewb...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On Jan 23, 10:06 am, Andy Dingley <ding...@codesmiths.com> wrote:
>
> > That's not what I mean -- what I mean is "Thinking that the web is
> > made out of printed paper"
>
> I understood that. And Pixel perfect design does make that
> assumption.
>
> > > But then so are my clients and their customers
> > They they're still wrong.
>
> No they're not. They just disagree with you that's all.

If they disagree with me by continuing to think that, "the web is made
out of printed paper" then they _are_ wrong! You might just as well
say that the Internet is a series of tubes.


> People have preferences and they tend to gravitate towards those preferences.

Of course. To recycle some trite slogan from McCola or whoever it was,
"Your burger, your way". Good fluid design _permits_ choice. Bad
design (and bad fluid design) prevents choice. Pixel-rigid design also
prevents choice.

In no way am I suggesting that good web design is about grey
backgrounds, HTML 2 and ugly design.



> You are assuming that if they do not follow your flexible
> width design they will fail.

Of course not. It's a big problem, that's just one part of it. But if
you throw a fixed-pixel design out at a market that can't make use of
it, then they'll ignore it.

Does bad usability hurt a site? Well you've probably heard of eBay,
and unless you're an old UK web-hack, I doubt you've heard of QXL. Yet
QXL (in their prime) were the one that had the big UK ad-spend, and
the better brand recognition in the UK. Lousy site though, and they
died as a result.


> You're right, but the pendulum swings both ways. You could fail too.

As a contractor I can't really fail. I simply work on one site, or a
different site. Like doctors, contractors simply bury their mistakes
and move on! 8-)


You specialise in graphically intensive site based around video
playback, and with a strong graphic content to the "framing" of this
video too. That's certainly the sweet spot for Flash and fixed-pixel
design. I doubt if fluid design has anything to offer you here, when
the only purpose of the "page" is to be the border around a video
streamer that's already fixed to one size. TV doesn't get any better
if you watch it on a Bang & Olufsen than an a Matsui.

At the same time though, we're building _sites_ here, not just pages.
What use is it if the "Watch footage of Snoop Dogg's last concert"
page is safely fixed-pixel bbut also the pure-text "Dates for the next
tour" page is too? For band / gig sites in particular, I do a lot of
my access from weirdly sized mobile devices. I'm checking ticket
availability, I'm signing up for the ticket lottery, I'm checking if
the delayed gig is actually goign to go ahead tonight whilst I'm
driving there.

[Back to original message]