Re: The Conflicting Notions of Ease of Use and Need for Authoring Tools

Ryan Cannon wrote:

> This is a fundamental problem with any art form (as CSS design is and 
> will increasingly become). There will always be those who maximize their 
> use of the language and those who don't really care what it's meant to 
> do and just need to get the job done. Writers will scoff at poor use of 
> grammar and artist will cringe at a non-artists choice of decoration.
> 
> To wave off semantic markup as unintuitive is short-sighted: the idea is 
> to change the way we think about design to optimize a new paradigm. The 
> vast majority of designers come from a print background, where there is 
> no thought to the whys and hows, only the end product. But on the web, 
> we're dealing with an organic product, one in which readers can rip open 
> the flesh and examine the skeleton. In addition, the print designer can 
> more accurately predict his audience, which is next to impossible with 
> digital design.
> 
> The key to the future is for designers to demonstrate the power of 
> maximizing emerging standards. As people get impressed with our work, 
> businesses will demand better designs and authoring tools will emerge to 
> fill the increasing need.

[this is almost off-topic in www-style, please prefer private answer, thx]

Guys, I am sorry to play the devil's advocate, but I have read this
kind of opinion for the first time 16 years ago while working on wysiwyg SGML
editors. Nothing has changed. And I bet it won't change for 99% of authors.
Not because they're not smart enough to get the semantic-ouhlala-it-s-hot
fever, but because they don't care. Don't tell my dad he has to care about
semantics when he wants to push online a page with the photos of his grand-
children. Wake up guys; nobody needs to integrate e = (m.v.v)/2 to follow
the parabolic trajectory of an object thrown in the air.

The only option here is Intuitive UI. Make it semantic, don't tell it. And
please, please, don't ask average users to understand our awful geeks' mess.

</Daniel>

Received on Tuesday, 4 January 2005 13:44:01 UTC