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RE: Font Resizers (WAS RE: back to top)

for

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Jan 11, 2006 4:09PM

On Wed, 11 Jan 2006, Austin, Darrel wrote:

> Have you ever tought a computer course? Have to spend a half our
> explaining the concept of right-clicking? Another half hour of cut and
> paste? ;o)

Surfing is difficult to people who haven't learned it as child, or from
their children or grandchildren. Let's not make it any more difficult.

> To be fair, on our new site, we likely will explain how to do this via
> your browser as well on an ACCESSIBILITY INFO page,

Why? If your site's purpose is to teach browser usage, fine. Otherwise,
questionable. Accessibility info page? Aren't they write-only pages?
Does someone actually _read_ them?

> but as far as the
> interface on each individual page, we're going to make the font resizer
> as simple and intuitive as we can./

Sorry, but that sounds like hubris.

People who design and implement browsers are perhaps not the brightest
people on earth, but they are professionals, and in big companies, there
are lots of them, with support from various specialists. Browsers are far
from ideal, because they are compromises between heavily conflicting needs
and goals. Yet, they they mostly do their job, and they are being
improved, they have some development control and feedback system, etc.
They also have some very nice features at times.

Now you are saying that you design something that duplicates browser
functionality in one way, and if you are logical, you won't stop there but
will create your version of many other functions as well. What makes you
think that you will have much better success? Would your strategy really
be suitable for web authoring in general? That would typically mean that
one underpaid employer, allowed to spend a small amount of his working
time to web stuff, reinvents the wheel that was designed by a large number
of computer professional over the years.

What is "simple" and "intuitive" is not a simple question at all.

--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/