Saturday, May 16, 2015
Why is the Web hard?
What makes the Web
difficult? The fact that it's separate from the documents that people create in daily life, i.e. HTML and links...only
databases have a linking concept. Word processing, spreadsheets,
photos, videos...all standalone files. Modern
browsers will do something useful with most any document type, though. Gone
are the days when everything had to be HTML. What's more, HTML can be
easily written in word processors. Notably, Open/Libre Office does a
good job.
The real issue is
expectations...people expect the kind of visual experience that only
magazines, historically, have provided. That's a high bar to shoot
for in casual documents. That kind of creativity can't be programmed.
Graphically sophisticated templates have formed a middle ground. The
creative part gets done once, then text is inserted in predetermined
spots, with font properties defined in CSS for consistency. Even so,
high quality articles with context specific graphics stand out,
which is what severely limits the number of people who can do it
well.
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