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I personally think a better approach is to hand out fully un-stylized sites, and provide a recommended CSS for people to apply client-side. That way the client

I personally think a better approach is to hand out fully un-stylized sites, and provide a recommended CSS for people to apply client-side. That way the client can adjust things more consistently to how they find it easier to read.

bartread 9y ago
The problem with that approach is it will only appeal to power-users. "Normal" people just don't care. My mum, my step-dad, my brother and his fiancee, my next door neighbours, my best friend and my worst enemy all have this in common: they go to a website and they want to see the content on the page. They don't care why or how, so they're never going to apply an optional CSS file, even in the unlikely event they understand what it is. Sorry, that's not meant to come off as a brutal put-down: it's just the way most people are about the web.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  It's a good point, but it's not a full counterargument. Regular users don't optimize their work environment strongly, but that doesn't mean they don't care. And current situation is that full power over site layout is in hands of site designers. I believe this is a bad balance, and needs to be strongly shifted towards good and easily configurable defaults client-side. That is, I believe the situation will improve meaningfully for regular users if we could seriously dumb down HTML5/CSS - while responsible creatives will be saddened, the reality proves that the commercial web in general can not be trusted with so much power over layout.
  - krapp 9y ago
    >the reality proves that the commercial web in general can not be trusted with so much power over layout. That's not a reality, though, that's an opinion. If we were to "dumb down" HTML5/CSS and remove degrees of creative freedom from authors in favor of centralized, client-side solutions, we would do so for everyone, not just the "commercial web." A web where everything looks and behaves exactly the same is a web which is only interesting to a minority of people. That web would probably have never escaped academia and the world would be worse off for it.
    - CaptSpify 9y ago
      100% disagree. People fundamentally understand the power of the web, even if they don't realize it. To be able to link/chat/discuss quickly, freely, and easily will still win out, and people will still use it.
      - TeMPOraL 9y ago
        Exactly. And if current wild west of web design tells us anything, is that users can endure any kind of look&feel because they ultimately don't give a crap about it, they want to do what they came there to do. (Which makes the "web where everything looks and behaves exactly the same" better than the web where designers fuck with UX to get a fraction of a percent increase on an A/B test, because consistent interfaces are easier on the mind of the user.)
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  So what is the problem with that? Just because "normal" people don't care, doesn't mean they have to. If they want a plain-text file of data to read, let them have it.
- gkya 9y ago
  > The problem with that approach is it will only appeal to power-users. "Normal" people just don't care. They do care. They just don't know better, and even for us power users content wins over the container. But everybody is complaining about slow websites that don't ever load, and this is leading more and more to the flocking away from the web to the apps. IDK if this is a good thing or not, but sometimes I think that if web became again a web of documents and applications again applications (albeit castrated tbh), that's at least better than what we have ATM.

bartread 9y ago

The problem with that approach is it will only appeal to power-users. "Normal" people just don't care. My mum, my step-dad, my brother and his fiancee, my next door neighbours, my best friend and my worst enemy all have this in common: they go to a website and they want to see the content on the page. They don't care why or how, so they're never going to apply an optional CSS file, even in the unlikely event they understand what it is. Sorry, that's not meant to come off as a brutal put-down: it's just the way most people are about the web.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
It's a good point, but it's not a full counterargument. Regular users don't optimize their work environment strongly, but that doesn't mean they don't care. And current situation is that full power over site layout is in hands of site designers. I believe this is a bad balance, and needs to be strongly shifted towards good and easily configurable defaults client-side. That is, I believe the situation will improve meaningfully for regular users if we could seriously dumb down HTML5/CSS - while responsible creatives will be saddened, the reality proves that the commercial web in general can not be trusted with so much power over layout.
- krapp 9y ago
  >the reality proves that the commercial web in general can not be trusted with so much power over layout. That's not a reality, though, that's an opinion. If we were to "dumb down" HTML5/CSS and remove degrees of creative freedom from authors in favor of centralized, client-side solutions, we would do so for everyone, not just the "commercial web." A web where everything looks and behaves exactly the same is a web which is only interesting to a minority of people. That web would probably have never escaped academia and the world would be worse off for it.
  - CaptSpify 9y ago
    100% disagree. People fundamentally understand the power of the web, even if they don't realize it. To be able to link/chat/discuss quickly, freely, and easily will still win out, and people will still use it.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      Exactly. And if current wild west of web design tells us anything, is that users can endure any kind of look&feel because they ultimately don't give a crap about it, they want to do what they came there to do. (Which makes the "web where everything looks and behaves exactly the same" better than the web where designers fuck with UX to get a fraction of a percent increase on an A/B test, because consistent interfaces are easier on the mind of the user.)
CaptSpify 9y ago
So what is the problem with that? Just because "normal" people don't care, doesn't mean they have to. If they want a plain-text file of data to read, let them have it.
gkya 9y ago
> The problem with that approach is it will only appeal to power-users. "Normal" people just don't care. They do care. They just don't know better, and even for us power users content wins over the container. But everybody is complaining about slow websites that don't ever load, and this is leading more and more to the flocking away from the web to the apps. IDK if this is a good thing or not, but sometimes I think that if web became again a web of documents and applications again applications (albeit castrated tbh), that's at least better than what we have ATM.