In message <doraymeRidThis-C4AAD5.14424608052008@web.aioe.org> dorayme <doraymeRidThis@optusnet.com.au> wrote: > In article <slrng24pqr.g1r.g.kreme@cerebus.local>, > Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> wrote:
>> In message <uce-473833.15244107052008@newsclstr03.news.prodigy.net> >> Gregory <uce@splook.com> wrote:
>>> Depending on who "your" visitors actually are. About 1/6 of US users >>> are still at 56k or less. (Silly me. I think there's a substantial >>> difference between 17% and "nearly none." >> >> Based on my webserver logs (across a varied collection of sites, most >> not written by me but hosted by me) it is well under 5%. >> >> The 16-17% that have dialup are not cruising around the web. They >> are getting their email and going to a small handful of sites that >> they know, and that is all they are doing.
> You need to be careful basing any world wide or even all America wide > trends on your own server logs.
I'm not basing world wide or even America wide anything. I am saying that I, myself, stopped worrying about dialup users a long time ago. I also know quite a few web designers, including some that specialize in flash laden crapsites and some who write very lean and compact code, then use heavy graphics in addition. No on is designing for dialup, nor should they be unless they are some edge-case site where a lot of their users will be on dialup.
And the contracts that I've had for web design make no mention of dialup and if dialup is mentioned, they react as if I mentioned Atari ST compatibility. Most my time is spend talking people out of heavy flash monstrosities that would choke the average broadband connection. Dailup?
Puh-lease!
>>> Would you give me $100 every time I rolled a one on a die if I gave >>> you $10 every time I rolled 2-6? >> >> That does that have to do with anything? Are you saying a dialup user >> is just as likely to make a purchase online as a broadband user? >> Because if so, that is demonstrably false. >>
> Why would you jump to a demonstrably false interpretation? There is a > simpler one staring us all in the face. That the dial up user is just > as worthy a person as a broadband user and only the ignorant or the > obsessively money minded website author would ignore the dial up user.
Where did worthiness get into this? The dialup user is in a very small minority and I do not consider them at all when I am coding a site. If they are unhappy with the speed of one of my sites, then they need to get off dialup or learn to deal. Now, in point of fact my sites tend to be heavily CSS and very light on crap like flash and multi-megabyte graphics, but that's because that's how I work, not because of any interest in the dialup user.
> I say ignorant because there is a way to design so that it is win win > for all, you provide for bigger pics by linking to them. It is not an > either/or situation.
My gallery code shows thumnails which link to scaled images which link to the original image. But the original pops up right away because the scaled image is being scaled by the HTML code from the full size image. If I cared about dialup users, I'd make the scaled image an actual smaller image, like I do for the thumbnails. But this would simply make the broadband user take an extra step, in effect punishing them for their fast connection in an effort to make allowances for the dialup user. This is what I mean by not being concerned with the dialup user anymore.
>> Designing sites for the lowest common denominator merely impedes >> progress.
> Designing for a win win for all is not designing for the lowest common > denominator. This is simply distorting the picture.
No, making a site conform to the needs of a dialup user means that you are shortchanging the broadband user and making them jump through extra steps as punishment for their high-speed.
>> I don't design for 640x480 screens, nor do I worry about 'web safe' >> colors because my assumption is that the vast majority of people have >> at least 1024x768 or better and are running with 16bit color. >> Likewise, the vast majority are not on dialup lines.
> You should not be designing for any screen size. It is as simple as > that.
That's just silly. The web is visual, and layout is important. Sometimes layout is the MOST important thing, even.
For example, I don't set my text to be the width of the window because text looks bad when it is 250 characters wide. So I put my text blocks into blocks that are 20-40 ems wide, so the lines are short. I make sure the site looks like I want it to at 1280 pixels wide, and probably at 1024 as well. If it decays a little bit at 800, I might tweak it, or not. But again, since most everythign I do is CSS/HTML4, the decay is pretty graceful and I rarely see any problems.
Narrower than that and I simply don't care. I've told more than one person who's said "the menus move around when I make my window 400px wide", "Don't make your window 400 pixels wide then."
-- Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards for they are subtle and quick to anger.
