Re: "Good" Web Pages

[David Blyth <dblyth -at- QUALCOMM -dot- COM>]

I forgot to mention....

>   However, Microsoft's sites are user-hostile. Some of the text is
>literally too small to read at all, let alone read comfortably.

>I used Microsoft's own web browser on Microsoft's own operating system
>to view Microsoft's own web page and I don't have my monitor set to an
>unusually high resolution--shouldn't everything have been kosher?

Not necessarily. If I remember correctly, MS and Netscape resize text in
different ways.  MS scales by "large, small" and so forth while Netscape
scales by literal point size. It's been awhile since I bothered using
the MS browser, but I think I remember that much.

Everything is probably cool when the IE browser is set to "large" on
Win95 (with which I don't bother either).

>The idea of having a wide rule running down the left margin of a page is
>a common (I might argue _tired_) design element

Agreed.  This idea may stem from the desire to design for the stupidest
browser still used much (probably AOL).  IMHO, this is not the best
approach, in part because:

  o it's harder to design for a stupid browser than a good one
  o one wants unique designs to stand out, & stupid browsers can't do much
  o you can set up advanced sites to be downwardly compatible.


David (The Man) Blyth
Technical Writer & Web Site Designer
QUALCOMM

The usual disclaimers apply - QUALCOMM isn't that crazy.

Blodo Poa Maximus
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