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Web Design Luminary Jeff Zeldman 164

Posted by Roblimo from the too-many-awards-to-count dept.
While we're waiting for Metallica and Douglas Adams to get back to us, we might as well go back to interviewing "normal" people. This week's (first) guest is Jeff Zeldman, Web designer extraordinaire. Some people in the design business say the best way to learn what the WWW will look like in six months is to keep up with Jeff's famous www.zeldman.com site. Whether or not this is true, he's certainly written one of the best Web design tutorials ever, and is also one of the prime movers behind the Web Standards Project. There is simply no one better to answer any Web design question you care to post below (hopefully confining yourself to one question per post).
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Web Design Lumiary Jeff Zeldman More

Web Design Lumiary Jeff Zeldman

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  • Reverse scenario question... (Score:5)

    by Jonny Royale ( 62364 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @07:24AM (#1072134) Homepage Journal
    Have you ever seen anything come from a browser publisher "extending" a standard (Microsoft, Netscape, other), and thought "Gee, I wish that was in the standard"? Examples?
  • As with everything, it's not really possible to have a web page that's just right for everyone. For example, people on 1200 baud modems will obviously prefer pages with no graphics at all :).

    So, in your opinion, what are the major categories of audiences and what sort of design is appropriate for each one? Why do you think your own web page has the best design for the audience you're aiming for?

  • I was unable to properly view your site. I received connection errors and failed to successfully download some graphics.

    My question is this: What design elements would you recommend revising in order to better deal with the awesome power of the Slashdot Effect, using your site as the example? ;)
  • I'm using Win95 and IE 5.
    It's too small for convenient reading running at 1024x768 on a 17in monitor.

    Kintanon
  • And what of the networks (like ValueClick.com or Eads.com) that base their services on ONLY click thrus? They're STILL profitable for both the host site and the ad network.

    Shut up, you don't know what you're talking about.

  • The point is that MS *used* to be very vocal in supporting standards
    making (rightly) a lot of noise about Netscape's proprietary
    extensions to HTML. But now they're the biggest browser...
  • Yes, you have a point, and I would like to apologize. I composed my post in a hurry, and though I checked it briefly for spelling, grammar and that the three links would work, I didn't take the time to consider that my second paragraph would sound like self-promotion. I really should not have made the link, and perhaps not even mentioned the subject of the page. If I could edit my original post, I'd change the second paragraph to:

    I'm working on a web site which may be linked from slashdot within a few months, and I fear that my site will buckle under the load, as zeldman.com did this morning.

    I really have been concerned about the slashdot effect, and I'm planning to off-load my images to another site with more bandwidth. Other than that, I'm really not sure what else I can do to prepare.

    I really am sorry that my post annoyed you and others. By wording my message poorly it probably missed its chance to be chosen.

    Editors: in the unlikely case that you do choose my message, please remove the second paragraph or replace it with the one from this message. I've done enough damage already.

  • I hate it when I click on a hyperlink on somebody's web site and I find it popping up a new window. 99% of the time, it's unnecessary except to satisfy the ego of someone whose page is so important they want it to remain onscreen while I visit the linked-to site. This is pure arrogant self-indulgence and that goes for Zeldman too.

    Listen, you "gods" of website design, and listen well: if I want a new window, I'll pop it up myself! I appreciate it that you know so much more about the Internet than I do, and that I'm fortunate to have found a web site that is willing to help me so much by popping up new windows... BUT NO THANKS! I know when I want a new window popped up, and I know how to work my browser well enough do so. So leave my windows alone! Your web site isn't so fscking special that it deserves to create its own new kind of segregation. SO CUT IT OUT!

    --Jim
  • then why the fack don't you, this guy, although a don't agree with all his stuff, is a designer's point of view, "real" designers do it from a practical point of view, there's a difference


    This guy is a 'designer' the same way John Carmack is a Ballet Dancer. Which is to say he isn't. Anyone who uses BRIGHT ORANGE backgrounds with tiny black text had damned well better be color blind to excuse themself. Gawd, maybe the site would be ok if not for the COMPLETELY UNREADABLE color scheme and font size....
    The opening page can be forgiven since I'm on a fast connection, the progress bar hi-jacking is annoying as hell, but I could still live with it, but that color scheme is straight from HELL and needs to go back there.

    Kintanon

  • It's true that paying only for click-throughs rather than impressions puts the whole advertiser relationship on a more objective level, but the click-through rate on the web is continuing to drop. Thus as that process continues it will become more and more difficult to fund a web site through advertising. Sure, there's profit for every click, but when you only get a (relatively speaking) small number of clicks you aren't going to be able to pay for bandwidth with that. In other words, don't spend it all in the same place :)

  • They pay for now, because they work for now. But the click-through rate is dropping every year, so eventually you will either not be able to sell advertising, or you will make so little that it will no longer be possible to support a web site on advertising. Maybe you could support a Yahoo.com on ads, but not a small community site like /., etc.

  • 2. Smart but angry people who love to flame at the slightest opportunity.



    This one is me.
    I don't care if it is a trick, My LORD man, get that crap off of the web before you blind some innocent passerby or hopelessly corrupt millions who go to the site to get a glimpse of 'How it should be done'.

    Kintanon
  • What's your preferred step-by-step/iterative method for designing a web site?
    Where would you put:
    - analysis
    - concept
    - test
    - design
    - test
    - implementation
    - test
    - release
    (did I mention "test"?)
    and what are the main activities in each step?

  • The whole fonts issue is my number 1 pet peeve with most web sites. Why can't the "web developers" use the fonts I specify at the size I specify? I swear some developers must be using 640x480 screen sizes on 21" monitors. How else can they read those ugly[1] 8pt fonts they insist on using?

    [1] Ugly is relative. I may not like the fonts you use. You might think my font selection sucks.

  • Well I'm using both IE5 & NN4.7 on a WinNT box and The font size used on Zeldman's site is always roughly the same size or larger than slashdots. Pictured here [placenamehere.com] is the comparison between Zeldman.com in IE5, NN4.7 & /. in NN4.7 (note, I have the default font size set to 'Medium' in IE5.

    So, is /. also inconvenient for you?
  • A practical point of view would not smash the status bar just for the sake of being annoyingly cute.

    A practical point of view would not use absolute pixel sizes that render a site unreadable on hi-res monitors.

    A practical point of view would not do that annoying "look at me! look at me! I'm an intro graphic! look at me!" idiocy on the first page.

    Nothing that degrades usability for anyone is being done from a practical point of view.

    This web site's behavior with respect to its stated purpose is akin to employers searching for a Unix admin, then asking him for a resume in Word format.

    Web designers still haven't caught on that there is no such thing as a "static" page. It may be viewed in a variety of resolutions, color depths, window size, and font combinations, and any site that assumes any of those is a static factor is going to have egg on its face every time somebody comes along who (shock, horror!) doesn't have MS Comic Sans installed.

    One of the more interesting design challenges is to do a page all in shades of gray and still make it look good. I wonder if this guy could do that. I've taken a stab at it [mindspring.com] and it actually didn't look awfully bad, although I'd probably nix the small-caps hack if I did it over again. I'd probably dim the whiteness of the text a bit too -- it's a little glare-y.

  • Hmm.. sounds like basically the same setup I have. 1024x768 on a 17" monitor. I'll agree with the other response here, the font on his site is larger than that of Slashdot. It seems fine to me.

  • How can I lay out my website so it does not fall victim to the /. effect?
  • >I would disable it--except that in Netscape it disables css too

    style sheets - the cause of more problems...

  • Banners (Score:5)

    by TheTomcat ( 53158 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @07:25AM (#1072153) Homepage
    This is only vaguely related to design, but directly related to the web, and functionality.

    We all know that banners don't work anymore. The only way a business can profit from banners is to show thousands per day. Most users don't even SEE banners anymore. We avoid them the same way we dig in the couch for the remote when commercials interrupt The Simpsons.

    Do you have any suggestions to make future, content-based sites profitable?

  • Appart from opening up the client to more security issues, imcompatability issues and instability what does client side scripting really do for the user? I mean, how often do you REALLY need a bunch of moving flashing mouseover crap that runs on only the newest browser, requires a bunch of plugins, and all to provide very little content. I fear that with such technologies as Javascript, VBScript, etc, that we're paying less attention on content, and more on flashyness. What do you feel does client side scripting contribute to the web in terms of usability and content?

  • Here's another question ... (Score:3)

    by gempabumi ( 181507 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @07:27AM (#1072155) Homepage
    Dear Mr. best ever,

    Why do you render my status bar useless with javascript mouseovers? Are you trying to disguise the state-of-the-art directory structure behind your site?

    Of the recent 5k contest [sylloge.com], which design did you like the best?

  • There is a growing tendancy among web designers to use flashy graphics and plug-ins to make their websites more attractive to the average user. However, the average user does not have the fat pipe into their home necessary to efficiently view these types of web pages. In fact, the whole of the internet suffers under the weight of streaming video, macromedia plug-ins, and the like.

    Is the trend in web design going to continue down this path - bigger, better, slower - as the size and complexity of web pages outstrip the medium which distributes them, or will we begin to see a return to simple and elegant websites?


    ------------------------------------------------ ----------------

  • I read [lycos.com] that the release of Netscape 6.0 will be so much like IE5 that some proprietary tags made specifically for Netscape 4 will NOT work.

    My question, then, is how in the world are we supposed to maintain multi-browser compatibility? Or should we even try anymore? I've been trying to steer my clients far clear of 'fancy' stuff by telling them that not everyone will see it the way we do...but with everyone else doing it, that argument is beginning to slip. Everybody wants Flash, and Quicktime, and JavaScript...
    I grow weary of fighting in the Browser Wars... ;-)

    The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk

  • I quote from your website:

    H1 {font: bold 24px verdana, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0xp;}
    H4 {font: 12px verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px;}

    So why, tell me, WHY did you use PIXELS (px) instead of POINTS (pt), thereby overriding my painfully crafted DPI settings, rendering your all page unviewable on my Linux machine?

  • I worked in the UK web design market for several years.

    During that time it was obvious that (graphic) design lead technology, with Macromedia for example creating flash to meet demand from, rather than inspire, web designers.

    Technology was seen as a way to say 'yes' to the designer's question 'This would be really cool - can we do it?'

    Do you think this is a bad thing, do you think it is as true in the US as in Europe, and do you think it will continue to be the case?
  • I have to second this question and the question another poster asked about why you have an entry page in the first place. I couldn't get past that so I can't comment on anything else... Bolie IV
  • Specifically, how bad are Netscape's problems with CSS, JavaScript, iframes, and the myriad other gripes developers hold for it?
    Here's a basic answer. [harvard.edu]
  • Dear Mr. Zeldman:

    Loved your work on the " Batman Forever [zeldman.com]" and " Batman & Robin [adobe.com]" movie websites. Rumor has it that Warner Bros is buying up all variations of "Batman: Year One" (Rumored to be the next movie)...

    Will you and the same design team work on that one, or is it too soon to tell?

  • When I pull the two pages up side by side Slashdot text is almost twice the size of Zeldman's. But I'm running IE in a larger than normal font size. The text I'm tying right now is half the size of the text of the message I'm replying to above it, this text would be inconvenient. However once I post the message it goes back to the way I like it.

    Kintanon
  • You're an idiot.
    ------------------------------------------ -----------

  • If the W3C wants compliance, it ought to write its own browser. To hell with Microsoft and Netscape. They've both had their shot and they've proven that they are more interested in market share than W3C compliance. But can we blame them? They're corporations. They're in it for the money, and everyone knows it. So why are we relying on them to build browsers that work, when it's obvious that they have no interest in doing so?

    Why don't we rely on those who do care about standards? People from the W3C and WaSP can sit around bitching about browsers all day long, but even the most well-written commentary isn't going to change the way these companies do business. Publishing standards and trusting the browser builders to comply might have worked for the Consortium in the beginning (another argument entirely), but the big boys are obviously having too much fun with their pissing contest to pay attention to those of us who have to work with their shoddy products. Why are we still letting them rule the playground?

    Build a browser that works, and let everyone download it for free - including Microsoft and Netscape. Why not? Let them build their proprietary browser extensions around a base module that works, and then no one will care if Netscape adds a layer tag, or if Microsoft uses its own version of javascript. These features will become extras that can be exploited by programmers instead of barricades set to trip us up.

    Build it, and they will come. And if they don't, who cares? The rest of us will, and good riddance to them both.

  • Jeff,

    Do you think that your job will change as new technology like broadband and WAP come along and are more available to consumers?

    Chris. (chris@printf.net)

  • Here's my question: (Score:4)

    by FascDot Killed My Pr ( 24021 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @07:03AM (#1072168)
    If you're such a hotshot web designer, why have you committed one of the cardinal sins of web design: Putting an "entry page" that does nothing but suck bandwidth and make it difficult to "back" out of a site?
    --
    Have Exchange users? Want to run Linux? Can't afford OpenMail?

  • When I wrote this earlier, I had forgotten that Amaya existed. What a lasting impression it made when I tried it out last summer!

    Amaya may be compliant, but it sucks. Just as Microsoft and Netscape need to learn from W3C's standards, the W3C needs to learn a few things from the evil corporations... like how to build a browser people will actually use.

  • You could pull a better design out of your ass? Then do it. Let's see it. Post the link here. We'll vote on it. And you better scan around zeldman.com, webstandards.org, and alistapart.com to make sure you know whereof you speak. Oh, and remember: Having a successful site (original content, community, etc.) will get you bonus points.

    But if, as I suspect, you're yet another trash talking punk, then please shut the hell up. Thank you.

    - Rev.
  • Why, to show off his "design" skills. The colors, the fonts, the "interactivity" of that page--you're not thinking of the "total user experience"! Users want more than information from a web site; they want a, uhh, total user experience! And sensible users won't mind postponing access to the information they're after (or merely curious about) when they can see what a fabulous color/font/JavaScript combination some "designer" designed!

    Thank god for Flash [flashsucks.com]. How did we ever get along without it?

    bobdc

  • WaSP and motivational activities (Score:3)

    by M-2 ( 41459 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @07:05AM (#1072172) Homepage

    Sir:

    Considering the somewhat lacking support for the features in the current specification of the W3C in both of the large-scale browsers (and some of the smaller ones), what do you feel is the best way to motivate them to become as compliant as possible? If it was as simple as users urging them, it would probably be done now. But Microsoft and Netscape still seek their own forms of 'embrace and extend' on their browsers. Any ideas as to how to try and get them to pay more attention to the standards?
    ----

  • Two questions - the first a tease, the second more or less serious, both regarding the WSP:

    1) WHY do most professional Web designers seem unable to comprehend HTML's alt attribute?

    2) The WSP's doing a great job on browser makers (thanks), but (perhaps coz it's lead/supported by so many designers) it stays pretty quiet about designer standards - an equally serious problem crippling the Web. Any plans in this regard - or are Web users going to have to set up "The Other Web Standards Project" (...or something to that effect) themselves?

    No offence, just serious disillusionment.

  • We all know that banners don't work anymore.

    "We" do? How do you come to that conclusion? Click-through rates, perhaps?

    First of all, I can't click through a billboard, I hardly ever see them, yet they don't seem to be going away. The reason is because they work.

    Second of all, you answered your own question: "We avoid them the same way we dig in the couch for the remote when commercials interrupt The Simpsons."

    Yet people continue to advertise on The Simpsons. Guess why? Because most people don't hit the remote. Advertising works.

    This is not to say that it's proven the banner ads "work" (whatever the definition of that is), but the jury is definitely still out. People do not have to click through for them to be effective.


    --

  • I have a question: (Score:4)

    by Skinka ( 15767 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @07:07AM (#1072175)
    What's with that small font www.zeldman.com, haven't you read any (web) usability guides?
  • People do not have to click through for them to be effective.

    This is silly. Sure, just glancing at a banner offers certain "background" influence, but when the medium allows you to be taken instantly to pretty much any destination, why be satisfied with so little?

    I think the future is in .sigs!! The .sig Economy, coming soon to an Internet near you.

    --

  • Not to mention putting puny black type on an ugly dim background color making it incredibly difficult to read.

    If this is the future of the web, I better get a new eyeglass prescription.


    --

  • You've obviously never developed a web site and used banners for revenue. The banner system still works quite well.
  • Your site was the inspiration for the site [wildwoman.org] I did for my wife.
    Anyway, how soon do you think it will be until we can use only style sheets on our websites without worrying about graceful degredation?
    This is not to say, by the way, that we shouldn't use tables, as Slashdot and I do. What do you think about Slashdot's layout? Especially the black background with the white table in front?

  • I'm not saying the ability to click through is useless or anything, only that it's a bonus and not the primary measure of effectiveness.

    For example, if I had a banner ad advertising that there was a special episode of The Simpsons coming up, I wouldn't have to click through in order to be prompted to watch it.

    Also, don't underestimate the power of branding. If people see a lot of banner ads for a particular product, and then at some point they need an item in that category, they are much more likely to pick a product where they recognize the brand.


    --

  • A question (Score:3)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@ y a hoo.com> on Monday May 15, 2000 @07:08AM (#1072181) Homepage Journal
    As I see it, web page requirements are diversifying, but web languages (such as the newer HTML standards) are increasingly confining, as they explicitly specify layout, l&f, etc.

    Do you think that current web standards will leave out more and more people as they get "fancier"?

    And, if so, do you think that there is a need for a fresh start, in which browsers intelligently determine the appearance, from a user's specification, and in which servers deliver only the raw information?

  • User Control (Score:4)

    by jonwiley ( 79981 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @07:33AM (#1072182) Homepage
    Now that web designers are more and more gaining the ability to control how their pages look, users seem to have less and less.

    Old school web programmers indicate this is a terrible loss. New web designers, many influenced by the firmly established print world, feel the opposite.

    Do you feel that the designer, or the user, should have ultimate control?

  • Re:Here's my question: (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Dear Mr. Future of the Web:

    Do standards mean nothing [w3.org] to you?

    thank you.
  • Why ask Zeldman this? You can go to http://www.mozilla.org and find out for yourself. Basically Mozilla/Netscape 6 is 100% standards compliant supporting all of CSS 1 and some of 2, the DOM, JavaScript, etc. By the way that 100% means that if it isn't a standard it isn't in there (read Netscape's layer tag). I don't know what developers have complained about Netscape's JavaScript implementation, after all the inovator (correct usage not MS type stealing and making propriatory) NS that came up with it has always been better with MS a step behind (the only way MS is better in the scripting dept. is the gaping security holes in it). iFrames IIRC is not a standard tag, though through CSS you can get the same thing (I've seen it you can too download Mozilla and go to Debug menu).

    The only reason IE 4 was better than NS 4 was because it came out later, compare Quake 3 to Quake 1 which is better? They are both trying to do the same thing, FPS, so why is the later one better? (it came out later)

    On a side note you should start to forget supporting the version 3 browsers, anyone still using them needs more help then being able to browse you site. People will use the lowest common denominator as long as developers keep supporting them.

  • IMHO, the web (ARPANET) was started as a means of sharing information and ideas. It was used to get important data from one point to another quickly and conviently. Now it is used as an "expression" of ones self and for money. People are selling stuff and wanting money for everything on their site. I agree, that a website needs to be attractive to keep people there, but the content is what matters. I also hate intro pages. Yes, we all know how to do an intro page, but how many times do you go to a website and then think to yourself "wait, do I really want to go to this site". I know I don't, when I go to a site it is for content, not the oooh ahhh effect.

    That's my $.02


    Munky_v2 [dialug.org]
    "Warning: You are logged into reality as root..."

  • Readers or Advertisers (Score:3)

    by DrSkwid ( 118965 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @07:38AM (#1072186) Journal
    There was a time when media would compete for readers to generate revenue from sales of the media but now the empasis seems to be to get readers to impress advertisers to part with money.

    When you design a web site should it be for the benefit of users or the benefit of page impression (i.e. splitting an article over three pages so the user gets three banner ads) and how do you balance that?
    .oO0Oo.
  • This guys website ranks among the top 10 ugliest sites I've ever seen. I hope to god someone kills him before anyone else adopts his complete lack of design skills.
    I suppose it would be forgiveable if he were color blind and used a giant magnifying lense to browse his site.
    Why are we asking this guy for advice again? I could pull a better design out of my ass.

    Kintanon
  • All of these questions are idiotic, rhetorical, or easily answerable without going to an "authority".
  • What I'd really love to see, is sane handling of combinations of pixel and percentage values in tables and such. Sometimes, you want to have a defined width on parts of a table, but say "just fill in the rest" on the rest of the table. For example, if I want a table that has some sort of a window that scales with the browser window size, you'd wana put your corners in as being statically sized, but the inside area just fill in whatever is left of the % of the screen which the table fills. Get it? :)

  • He already answered this question in his website [zeldman.com], just for curiosity. People can now moderate this question down. :)

    --

  • Jeff Zeldman doesn't need me to defend him or his recognized place among the web design greats, but allow me to say that just as absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence, neither does anyone's ignorance of Mr. Zeldman's legacy of work or stature mean that he has none.

    Neither does his legacy or stature endow him with infallibility (or a need to march lockstep with conventional thinking on all matters). I do agree with a few of the quibbles raised here and would be interested in his reasons for going against the CW on px vs pt and hijacking the status bar.

    I do know from his excellent mailing list (and now web site [alistapart.com]) that he tends to believe in stretching the limits on PERSONAL sites, while playing it more conservative on "for hire" customers.

    Believe me, he knows of what he speaks. And if you haven't heard of him and want to know who is out of it (you or the rest of the world) try typing "Zeldman" into Google [google.com].

  • i know i'm just reiterating what has already been said but the "entry" page is passe, overdone, and against good design sense nowadays.

    the javascript status bar is one of the most annoying "features" being practiced today.

    the whole site, from his "pixel defined layouts" to specific style extensions are entirely blindspotted. so far it's been totally unreadable/unusable on most computers i've tried to view it at (mostly linux/solaris/hp but including several windows boxes).

    his page doesn't comply with standards (it failed validation). ironic from someone who is supposed to be establishing them?!

    there are broken links (his links to third party pages of people using his graphics). it's easy to automate this to verify links are still good

    the navigation is inconsistent and poor. sometimes there's a side bar, sometimes some links underneath...

    there's a lot of self-hype that i find no justification in. so he scanned a lot of pictures and ran them through a few filters. big deal. looks like crap anyway. most of the pages using his "work" seem like warez waldo's or geospitties anyway.

    no reverse support for older browsers, especially those that don't support javascript or only partially.

    lastly, i just don't like his style a great deal. sure he's got "something" and he knows a little bit about design but i haven't done web design for a couple years now professionally and i could still crank out much better CSE validated, cross-platform, scaffolded code in a matter of a couple hours.

    i will never begin to understand why so many people flock to certain sites touting how wonderful this designer or that designer is, hyping up their ego when there is neither substance nor good design rpesent in their work. it baffles me.

    on the plus side, at least he's not abusing the blink tag and using every plug-in in the book. =)

    ~sigh~ why can't designers learn how to design?

    steve
  • Indeed...why did the link to the tutorial crash Netscape? I mean, I know N is pretty screwy in general, but it takes a heck of a lot of bad code for page to make a browser constantly crash.

    ----

  • does anybody remember the stink microsoft raised about open standards in instant messaging clients? they were the underdog there, too...
  • Amen. The prevailing direction of web design, and HTML standards, has been away from the original concept of HTML. IIRC (can't find a link at the moment), the manner of display was supposed to be determined by the browser. Fer example, according to Zeldman, you can now turn off link underlining [zeldman.com]. This is the reverse of the underline tag, but is just as bad. Isn't a document's utility as hypertext subverted if linked text isn't identifiable? This also subverts the user preferences (underlining is settable in Netscape). Style sheets and JavaScript also contribute to this problem. Why is this a good thing, Mr Zeldman?

  • A number of posters have pointed out "features" of your site which they don't approve of. Althought it would be interesting, there must be something better you can do during the interview than defend every one of your choices. Since your title page is of a Transitional DOCTYPE (but why not XHTML?), you obviously feel that many of your decisions were the lesser of two evils. Therefore, I ask you thus:

    • What do you think your site (and especially your code) will look like 6 months from now?
    • Will there still be so many compromises?
    • And what needs to happen before it can achieve the most optimistic state?

  • mod this guy to 5 (Score:3)

    by gempabumi ( 181507 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @07:45AM (#1072202) Homepage
    Slashdot and Zeldman are having a real laugh over this one. This is an obvious setup. I think what they're really doing is categorizing the intelligence of /. user into 4 groups:

    1. Clueless people who look at the site, think it's neat, and ask Zeldman a serious question.

    2. Smart but angry people who love to flame at the slightest opportunity.

    3. Paranoid people determined to expose the hidden motives behind everything.

    4. Ultrageeks who have seen this trick before and, recognizing the brilliance, go on to ask an interesting question about web design.

    So my question: Are there any examples of your actual web design? Can we see them?

  • that this supposed web guru has a big faux pas on his main page - namely "mystery meat navigation" at the top of the page.

    See http://www.websitesthatsuck.com/badnavigation.html for more info.

    --

  • Pixel based alignment and HTML (Score:5)

    by mcelrath ( 8027 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @07:47AM (#1072204) Homepage
    One of the most disturbing trends that I see in web design these days is the trend toward trying to control layout at the pixel level. As HTML (Hypertext Markup) was not intended to be a graphics language, what is your comment on this?

    As an example of this, many sites (including yours) use <font size=1> to acheive a font that is fairly uniform in pixel size across browsers. Anyone with a high-resolution screen will tell you that this is highly annoying, since it results in an almost unreadable font. Forcing netscape to use a larger font size often destroys the layout of the page. What's worse, some pages use dynamic fonts and other features to force this on the user.

    As another example, many pages use the <table>, and <layer> to specify the exact size in pixels of portions of the page, and then put a little notice at the bottom ("This site best viewed at 800x600") or some such.

    What are standards groups doing to fix this? Will I be looking at pages designed for 800x600 (or worse, 640x480) with my 1920x1440 screen forever? Will persons with laptops at 640x480 be unable to read the web soon? Will standards bodies ever require percentage-of-screen width and height specifiers, or even better, implement <table width=30ch> to specify sizes in relation to the current font size?

    --Bob

  • any how can you support "some" of css2 and claim 100% standards compliance?

    They aren't claiming 100% compliance with every standard, just the ones they listed, html 4.0, css1, DOM, etc. They specifically state that css2 is not fully supported yet (i think they said it was 40 or 60% supported, and counting).

  • Am I the only one who thinks that the text is not small? I'm running win95 with netscape 4.7 here at work and the font size seems fine to me. Larger than most sites even. What platform/browser are you using?

  • Why is this site in "Flyspeck 1" font? (Score:3)

    by Mike Van Pelt ( 32582 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @12:20PM (#1072211)
    I don't care about the "ugliness" of the site that many people complained about. I care about content rather than style. I'll return again and again to the ugliest site in the world, as long as it has content that I am interested in.

    As to whether the site has any content at all, I can not tell. It displays on my Sun workstation in a font that is only very slightly more readable than a "greeked" iconized xterm. That is, by putting my nose up against the CRT and squinting real hard, I can make out about one word in three.

    Netscape on the Sun does not have the ALT-[ ALT-] commands to increase and decrease the font, so in order to read this page, I would have to either "Show Source" and read the HTML source, or go into my Netscape preferences and tell it "Reasonable size font, and use my font no matter what the idiot document says to use." This *sometimes* helps; I haven't tried it with this site. Since he's going so far as to specify his page at the pixel level, I suspect this might be one of the sites whose author has taken great pains to override all reader preferences.

    I hate setting the "use only my font" config, because sites which use reasonable fonts often use them for reasonable purposes, and I don't want to lose that in my web browsing.

    Normally, sites that are so thoroughly unreadable as this one, I hit the "Back" button on my browser. That's what I did with this one.

    ("Small favors" department: At least he didn't render his preferred page layout into a .GIF file. I have seen pages like that.)

    (Desired feature for Mozilla: A "minimum font size" config tag which triggers a "display everything in Times-Roman 12, period, no exceptions" rule.)
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • So the future of the web is difficult to read, ignores standards, has no clear navigation and is generally irritating and pointless?

    I'm just worried that he's probably right.

  • Rollovers... is there a point ? (Score:3)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @07:55AM (#1072217) Homepage

    Your site uses rollovers at almost every opportunity.

    What do they add to the users experience ?
  • Like I said in my other post [slashdot.org] this probably some kind of example of bad web design, so small fonts is something to be expected..

  • Well, the headline calls him a "web design luminary", right? That's among the most luminous pages I've ever seen.

  • Do you agree with Nielsen? (Score:4)

    by Pseudonymus Bosch ( 3479 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @08:17AM (#1072223) Homepage
    I have no idea about you and your views, but I have read lots of the Alertbox [useit.com] columns by Jakob Nielsen.

    Do you agree with him? Do you disagree? What about?

    At least you share the use of TITLE attributes in hyperlinks (a good feature that Slashdot shouldn't chomp away).
    __
  • Jeff --

    I know you're part of the whole Web Standards Project [webstandards.org]. A key plank in the platform seems to be fighting the placement of propietary interests above baseline support for standards, as seen in the recent IE 5.5 for Win-32 brouhaha. To me it seems that one could change a few words, and phrase the following question:

    What is your stance on the apparent shift of the web from an open community to one ruled by territorialism and propetism, i.e. web and software patents?

    Just curious Jeff....

    ----
  • Please, moderate this up through the roof, so that the question is forwarded on to him. (Hint: Not this post, its parent.) IIRC, this is the third Web Design God(tm) that Slashdot has interviewed, and they all seem to get famous for pages like this.

    While I see nothing wrong with pages with annoying javascript and bright colors that hurt my eyes -- there's always the Back button -- I do see something wrong with these people ignoring the standards. Most of his code is pretty clean, so it wouldn't take much work to fix the five or ten errors that the W3C validator returns.

    I'm tired of web designers that think, "Hey, it works in MSIE and Netscape, who cares about the ohters?" This is especially amusing since one of the first links on the page is to the Web Standards Project. *sigh*

    --

  • I imagine that following the post [slashdot.org] by FascDot Killed My Pr, a lot of the posts will have a similar structure. So I'm defining a macro to avoid repetition:

    #define WHY If you're such a hotshot web designer, why

    Using this definition, here is my question:
    WHY does www.webstandards.org [webstandards.org] open links in a new browser window, when this behaviour is inconsistent with the rest of the Web, annoying, and strongly discouraged by the W3C?

  • I don't care about the little graphic at the top of the page that subsidises a web site so that I may have a more cost effective browsing experience.

    What I do object to is when said ad holds my page load hostage for fourty seconds on a cable modem at that.

    A standard I would like to see is a maximum load time for any web page element or something to that effect. Any ideas?

  • Not to flame, but... (Score:5)

    by mr.nobody ( 113509 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @07:09AM (#1072244)

    I find it hard to ask HTML questions to someone who has committed the cardinal sin of taking away the status bar with JavaScript.

  • How far has Netscape fallen? (Score:3)

    by Oscarfish ( 85437 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @07:12AM (#1072246) Homepage
    While trying to maintain a deisgn that looks decent in both Internet Explorer 3/4/5 and Netscape 3/4, I've become more and more frustrated with Netscape with each iteration of thier browser (their Preview Release 1, based on Mozilla, doesn't look too encouraging to me either). How far do you think they have fallen behind Microsoft's IE in compatibility and performance of HTML? Specifically, how bad are Netscape's problems with CSS, JavaScript, iframes, and the myriad other gripes developers hold for it?

    Do you think 6.0 will bring it close to IE's level of functionality?

  • where's the interview (Score:4)

    by geekpress ( 171549 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @07:13AM (#1072247) Homepage

    Jeff, I programmed for a web design company in which design issues totally trumped more practical concerns like download time. (In one case, I was forced to create absurdly complex html tables just so that the designer could get his one-pixel rounded corners on his notecard design.) What do you see as the appropriate balance between aesthetics and practical usability?

    P.S. That company is now out of business, thank goodness!

    -- Diana Hsieh

  • Uhh... (Score:3)

    by babbage ( 61057 ) <cdeversNO@SPAMcis.usouthal.edu> on Monday May 15, 2000 @02:53PM (#1072250) Homepage Journal
    So how, exactly, do garish background colors, illegible typefonts, a pointless splash-screen home page, and non-standard navigational cues (e.g. non underlined links) help make for a "well-designed" site? I'm having a hard time understanding it. My instinct is to let the defaults rule -- if the user of my sites wants to use dark grey letters on a deep black page, hey, that's her business -- my job is just to get her the material. Whatever works well for her is fine by me. But then, I'm not a fancy web designer.

    I can see where exciting design tricks are usful for, say, a magazine or TV show. But on the web, where I for one am working with a low resolution monitor and (often) a text based connection, and where others may be using anything from IE5 on a shiny new Mac to the default browser on a Palm VII, I have a hard time seeing the point in making flashy 'designed' web pages. The 'benefit' of having to turn off javascript just to be able to read the font that looked best on your monitor just doesn't work for me. But then again, I'm not the fancy web designer, I'm just a happy little page minimalist.

    At least your pages seem to work okay when I disable the gadgetry -- that's an excellent start. And it also looks okay in Lynx -- an easy thing to do, but too often overlooked (as it translates into "looking good" on palmtops, for search engines, and on alternative browsers for e.g. the blind). I give you points for that. But I still don't see the point -- the benefit -- of all the flashiness. Maybe it's just my sense of aesthetics -- I like a nice clean simple site, without all the trappings (think photo.net [photo.net]. Different strokes...

    I guess that's the gist of my question though: when there are so many benefits to having a straightforward, Lynx friendly site, and when it takes so much effort to get an "enhanced" site to degrade to the older level, what exactly do you gain by the effort? What, in short, makes it worthwhile?



  • Evaluate Slashdot (Score:5)

    by Pseudonymus Bosch ( 3479 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @08:10AM (#1072255) Homepage
    What would you change, what would you add, what would you remove in Slashdot [slashdot.org]?
    __
  • I read that the release of Netscape 6.0 will be so much like IE5 that some proprietary tags made specifically for Netscape 4 will NOT work.

    My question, then, is how in the world are we supposed to maintain multi-browser compatibility?

    Easy - write to the standards and only to the standards. Of course, as you point out, it's not always that simple, with people clamouring for overladen JavaScript, Flash, DHTML and the latest stupid gimmick. Just Say No :-)

  • Alistapart (Score:3)

    by scumdamn ( 82357 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @08:35AM (#1072259)
    I've seen a lot of criticism of your Zeldman.com site here in these forums. I've been reading alistapart [alistapart.com] recently, and I think the design there is very pleasing to the eye.
    Are you trying more experimental stuff with your peronal site that you wouldn't try with a commercial site like alistapart?
    What other sites have you done recently that you are proud of?
    Why haven't the dead ads been updated recently? No good ones coming in?

  • Web != Print != TV (Score:4)

    by TheTomcat ( 53158 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @07:16AM (#1072267) Homepage
    I work as a web programmer. The company where I work was recently acquired by a high-profile (for my location) communications firm. The new company has great print skills, but almost everyone here is old-school.

    About once a day, I find myself telling one of the suits that "The web is not print."

    My question: Do you have any suggestions for getting the traditional artists of the world to recognize the web as a new medium, and not just print-on-a-monitor?

  • Optimism? (Score:5)

    by Chalst ( 57653 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @07:18AM (#1072270) Homepage Journal
    How hopeful are you that Microsoft can be coaxed into making IE
    standards compliant? What exactly do you think Microsoft's motive was
    in not supporting HTML 4.0 completely?
  • Some people in the design business say the best way to learn what the WWW will look like in six months is to keep up with Jeff's famous www.zeldman.com site.

    Does that mean that in six months the entire web will be.... ORANGE? Noooooooooooooooo!

  • Balancing Technologies (Score:5)

    by Proteus ( 1926 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @07:19AM (#1072273) Homepage Journal
    As you are no doubt aware, the technology that drives web site design is advancing rapidly. However, there are still a lot of users who run older browsers, or prefer to use text-only browsers such as Lynx.

    Obviously, one wants to reach as large an audience as possible, but not "lag behind" too far. How do you go about balancing the use of newer technology on a site without alienating users of older software, disabled users, and text-only browsers?

    --

  • That INTERNET II is going to make the web a purely commercial marketplace?

    Let me explain. Right now any Joe Schmoe can put up a web site, and have the potential to serve 100,000 pages a day. When INTERNET II comes along, we'll all be competing with expanded rich multimedia content, FMV, etc... that only large corporations have the ability to do right. HTML won't cut it anymore.

    Will this kill the nature of the internet as we know it?

    tcd004

    Here's my Microsoft parody, [lostbrain.com] where's yours?

  • To a similar point, why d'ya think I can't get through your "Ask Dr. Web" without experiencing a Netscape crash (4.7, Windows)?
    --
  • (Desired feature for Mozilla: A "minimum font size" config tag which triggers a "display everything in Times-Roman 12, period, no exceptions" rule.)
    Already existing feature in Opera 3.62: User mode (Ctrl-G).

    Can be set to override nearly any presentation done by the page author, and apply the user's own style sheet. Images can be turned off using the G key. I have it, I use it, and I totally love it.

    Would be a worthwhile addition to Mozilla indeed.

  • With sites like http://www.halfbrain.com/ [halfbrain.com] and http://www.mywebos.com/ [mywebos.com], how far do you think will the integration of (X)HTML, CSS and ECMAScript go? Will this be our "new" desktop for the future?
  • I think there's too much concern on the web with form over content. Slashdot is a prime example, this is not the optimal form, but nevertheless they provide enough entertaining, timely, and relevant content that they have tons and tons of ridiculously loyal readers. This is because, of course, the best content is the sum of the users themselves, which /. achieves perfectly.
    And I think orange is ugly, so I don't dig zeldman's site. It's just too bright

    Here's some content for ya, if you care about your feedom at all, vote for Ralph Nader! [votenader.com]
    And is he really a great web designer? He has a broken link right on the front page... http://www.zeldman.com/orson.html is what the "if movies had been websites" points to. And the mozilla link is broken too. [zeldman.com]

    What we need is a daily page done by an AI personality, now that'll be cool



    ___________________________
    Michael Cardenas
    http://www.fiu.edu/~mcarde02
    http://www.deneba.com/linux
  • If you're such a hotshot web designer, why have you committed one of the cardinal sins of web design

    Not just one, either. For example, on http://www.zeldman.com/about/aboutf.html [zeldman.com], you say "You need a frames-capable browser, buster". Well that's great... but I have one (Lynx). If you'd label your frames in a sensible manner, though, I wouldn't have to pick one at random ("content" would have been so much better that "mid"). As it is, I went for "bot" first, which took me to http://www.zeldman.com/about/bot.html [zeldman.com], a prime example of what (for me, at least) is the cardinal sin of web design -- no alt attributes for images.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I rarely "reload" slashdot, but today I just happened to finish reading some interesting comments about the Motif story [slashdot.org], and I saw this article. Like many others, I saw the words one of the best Web design tutorials ever [zeldman.com] and I just had to click to see. Of course, all I got was connection reset by peer.

    Someday (hopefully within a couple months) I may have to deal with the slashdot effect, with my Homebrew MP3 player project [pjrc.com], which is open source, but at the moment only in a just barely working state.

    My question, specifically from your recent experience, is how should one deal with the slashdot effect, knowing that is coming.

  • With the large division between the standard HTML and the HTML tags that broswers like IE5 and Netscape will use and other division such as the fragmentation of the XML development base, what can Internet community users, SysAdmins and other industry users do to promote a unified standards base for platforms such as HTML and XML. I know that the old "Don't use IE5 becuase of..." stuff simply isn't going to work in the real world. What I'm looking for is a real, meaningful way to unite users and developers to conform to true standard.

  • Impact of Mozilla (Score:3)

    by revscat ( 35618 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @07:21AM (#1072295) Journal
    Zeld-mon, I would just like to hear your two bits about Mozilla, not just as a standards compliant browser (which Gecko certainly is) but as an application deployment platform as some advocates/developers are claiming. If Mozilla does become such a beast, the nature of the game will almost certainly be changed, especially re: Microsoft's desktop domination. Do you see real potential for Mozilla to evolve into such a platform, or are the developers getting over-exuberant? - Rev.

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