When Written: Aug 2009
When thinking about using new technology whether it be a new mobile phone or designing a new web site it is all too easy to get carried away with all the features that the product has or the web site could have.
At this point stop! Don’t think what the technology will do, but rather concern yourself with what you want it to do for you.
I try to apply this to web sites I am involved in; it is all too easy to get obsessed with extra features that get in the way of the core purpose of the site. With all the great possibilities brought to the web with JavaScript, AJAX, Flash, Silverlight to mention just a few of the browser based technologies it is very easy to get carried away with what is possible.
One site I visit regularly is www.miniajax.com which is full of JavaScript based ‘widgets’ many of which offer a quick fix of coolness for the flagging designer. But always bear in mind what would happen to the web visitor who has JavaScript turned off on their browser? Do you take the view that you don’t care about them? Not a good attitude. Rather your site should ‘fail’ gracefully and still work for these users.
Bear in mind they may not have the ability to enable JavaScript in their browser if it has been locked down by some overzealous system administrator. So a link that reveals some text with a smooth graphical effect achieved with JavaScript should at the very least still reveal the same text if JavaScript is not running on the client browser. This I know makes more work, but only those who don’t do it would claim that ‘HTML hairdressing’ was easy!
Article by: Mark Newton
Published in: Mark Newton