Re: <nettime> Re: Disassociate Webdesign from Usability

[Craig Brozefsky <craig@red-bean.com>]

brian carroll <human@architexturez.com> writes:

>  while having HTML skills, and CSS seems easy enough, the aspects of
>  more complex CGI scripts and advanced functionality seem to me like
>  they will become either easier or harder to implement. will there
>  ever be a day when someone, novice-intermediate, will be able to
>  get a web database system up and running without programming
>  skill?.

The Apple WebObjects Direct-To-Web system is pretty good at that, mind you
that it is proprietary.  I wouldn't say that someone "without programming
skill" could use it, but your average office or home power user could
operate it effectively.

> i ask because a simple browser detector to serve multiple CSS pages,
> is, for a small site more than just HTML/CSS and a GUI authoring
> program.

With Apache it's a matter of SSIs which turn on an environment variable
containing the browser identification string.  However, there is little
too no need to have multiple CSS stylesheets in order to customize for
particular browsers.  With CSS, any need to customize for a particular
browser is what they are trying to avoid.  Even then, you can do this thru
the use of media types (I can't recall what the term used in the CSS spec
is) which are like "television" "print" etc... or any abitrary string you
want.

> the idea of 'classes' of websites comes to mind, such as classes of
> drivers licenses. will there always be a full spectrum of
> sites. will they all raise in complexity. or will the low end go
> under at some point. and its content. i'm wondering...  brian

Well, I've never left a website with content interesting to me, because it
was too plain, or in text, or too static.  In contrast, I routinely have
left websites with interesting content because they were garish, used
media that I could not play on my completely non-proprietary system, or
they had broken dynamic elements.

I don't see the low end going under without major changes in the transport
and display technologies, like when Gopher was replaced with HTTP (and
even then you can still get gopher sites thru gateways).




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