leatherback wrote:Nope. I still like the flat-out text best. I avoid javascript, xml, I do use CSS, but in a nicely degrading way.
Why add more? Initially the web is about content. Styling is second to that. No matter how nice your site looks, and how much flashy jkunk is tossed in it, if the conternt is useless, you'll have 0 visitors. On the other hand.. A site with good content, black-on-white, may have 100-es of visitors a dad.
So.. Nope. I do not worry about cross-browser issues. I just make sure that if it fails, the site is still working normally. Perhaps withouyt advanced features. But operational and well-looking.
This is an intensely personal issue. Content is key, but design and usability are also vital.
On linux, for example, there are tons of text-only mail clients. These are faster and lighter to run than their graphics-heavy counterparts, and tend to offer fewer opportunities for virus writers - yet graphical mail clients like Evolution are way more popular. Are the text-based clients better than the graphic ones? No, at least not by definition, and neither are they worse. Inidividual versions of individual clients may be more buggy than others and may be worse in that sense, but a text-based and a graphics-based mail client are just as valid as each other, provided they're both standards-compliant and both work as designed.
Me, I tend to use Evolution when I'm at home as I like the ease with which I can work with it. But I can also use a light text client if I'm connecting to a remote site over an SSH client.
On a really good site, the user should be in full control of the tools they use to access your site. Your site should work on everything from Lynx to an all-singing all-dancing Firefox/IE/Opera, and everything in between, including site readers for the visually impaired. The user should be able to control text/background contrast, and even the size of navigation items - some people are less nimble-fingered than others.
It should also be multilingual, and have icons as well as text on navigation items, so as to make it as accessible as possible. You know those white-on-green signs of a matchstick man running out a door? This simple icon conveys the sense of "emergency exit" to a huge proportion of the world's population, who need to be able to take in that information in a split second.
You want to explore your potential? Come up with a style and navigation structure that meets all of the above requirements. You won't get a much bigger challenge than that.
In the meantime, if you've successfully abstracted your layers so that presentation and application are distinct, then you ought to be able to create a range of "skins" fo your site - maybe a flash one, a javascript / DHTML one, a plain text one and an XML one would be a sensible set to start with. You could then use agent sniffing, or user selection to decide which skin to apply.
The more skins you provide, the greater your potential market/audience.
But everything in life is a compromise. When building your site, you have to consider content, design, usability, performance, security, stability, scalability, robustness, budget, timescales, etc etc... You may well end up with a different balance of all these ingredients on every site you do, as every site will have different priorities.
Or at least that's been my experience.
