its the content
i had a visit from a friend of mine who works as a web designer. she was half way through her pint of ice cream when she came in. i was working on a website and she took one look at the page i was working on and she gave me that knowing smile.
“obssessive/compulsive.”
“what?!?”, i said.
“everything has to be visually aligned to almost everything else be it vertically or horizontally; consistency and readability are sacrificed for the sake of alignment; this paragraph’s font is smaller than the other paragraph because it has to fit in the confines of the length or width of the image beside, above or below it; even the consistency of the menu is compromised for the sake of aligning the top and bottom of the menu to the top and bottom of the content; there’s very little white space to rest the eyes; everything is filled. obssessive/compulsive.”
“and apparently, they’re not familiar with web politics.”
“huh?!?”, i asked.
“well, if they are familiar with it, they would know that even if you move this image or that paragraph by 4 or 5 or even 2 or 3 tiny pixels up or down it wouldn’t matter because each computer has its own video configuration quirks and will always show things a little differently; each user has her/his own browser preference which in themserlves render a page differently; not all the chosen fonts — which are too many by the way — are installed in all of the computers in the world which means this or that may or may not be displayed or rendered properly.”
“if i were you, either i’d tell them about it and compromise or drop them like a hot potato.”
“why?”, i asked, indignantly impressed.
“because they don’t get it.”
she dives into her ice cream again.
“at the end of the day, its doesn’t really matter if this picture is higher by 2 millimeters from the top of text column beside it. what matters is that they saw the picture and was able to read what you have to say.”
“you don’t eat the container. you eat the ice cream”, raising her pint.
“its the content.”
11 February 2007 12:31 pm at 12:31 pm
Wow! Sage words.
12 February 2007 12:08 pm at 12:08 pm
yup! good thing she’s a friend of mine.
and yes, i dropped the potato.
29 January 2008 6:17 pm at 6:17 pm
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