Re: [WSG] Standards Compliance -vs- User Enjoyment

[Jeff Davies]

Horses for courses - you build what will attract your client's audience - 
if the client requires a site for a niche audience with it's own 
characteristics (as long as these are known not just assumed) then a lot of 
the usual cliches about not losing part of the potential audience MAY not 
apply. There must be some people out there who actually like sitting 
through flash animations - just like the movie companies must have done 
audience research that proves that most of us like sitting through endless 
clever animated sequences that eventually get you to the menu screen on a DVD.

When I started working on websites the woman who took me on said just 
remember that there are millions of idiots out there who will burn up their 
phone bill and sit for ages waiting to see a fake image of Gillian 
Anderson's privates slowly reveal itself on screen but they're unlikely to 
be still waiting on your ever-so-neat price list and order form for home 
delivered pizza to materialise.

As basic advice it's worked for me
Jeff
06:28 05/06/2004, you wrote:
Hey list,
I have something which has been a major topic of discussion between a 
friend and I.
I am currently working on a promotions website - promoting for Sydney 
Nightclubs (R&B Scene)
To knuckle down and get to the point - Do I use webstandards and efficent 
coding to make the website...
Or do I use Flash, Verbose Table Layouts, Lots of Images & Animations 
etc... To get people interested.

Really it is a question of - do I make the website for viewer enjoyment, 
or for the widest viewer spectrum.

I am not sure if many of you would be in the same situation, but I can 
imagine it has come up at least once with us all before.
Whether its a news website, or a Hosting companies website...

My situation is a very sticky one - Clubbers dont want web standards, they 
want to see - what they can't have - lots of pictures help, and sounds are 
good (ambient music, on/off switch of course).

My website hasn't begun yet, although I have some rough ideas, one which 
my friend came up with:
<http://www.equicom.net/chris/test.html>http://www.equicom.net/chris/test.html
I think its great, doesnt use flash or anything.
It was an eye opener thinking it was as simple as it was.
It works in FireFox (exept sound) which is good...
But the fact that it looks good with such a simply design.

What are your opinions - and can you lend me any assistance.
Web Standars are very important to me, and I would much rather use 
standards compliant code, than make 10 extra people per 100 happy because 
there is a boxed layout (like the demo website)...
I could code that in CSS, but it wouldn't be as solid as it is with Tables.

Anyway!
Let me know what you all think!
Cheers!
Chris Stratford.
web-arts: the art & craft of web design
http://www.web-arts.biz 

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