This was a bit of light-hearted fun, with two heavyweights standing in opposing corners and trying to convince us their point of view was right.
[the protagonists on the podium]
In The Design Corner – Mr Simon Collison
The Design Manifesto went thus:
- Visual design is not complex engineering
- Design interfaces visually, don’t be afraid to take risks
- Reserve the right to veto decisions of technologists
- Think, build & design organically
- Don’t pander to personal prefereneces
- Deliver a rich, considered visual experience for all
- Be expressive with web typography
- Layout decisions are the preserve of the designer
- Visual design makes the first impression – respect it!
- Build everything in Flash (not really)
[Evil Drew - New Implementation, New Danger!]
In The Implementation Corner – Mr Drew McLellan
It all started with nxoc01.cern.ch, the very first web server. Drew said we were all implementers, and as such, we needed to know our enemies:
- Fixed width layouts
- Flash for non-media presentation
- (Flash breaks the basic nature of the web when used for anything other than a player for graphics or audio, and each Flash player instance impacts on performance of the browser)
- Text replacement, since text on a web page is a solved problem
- Styled form elements
- Potent GETs
- Controlled heights
- Controlled text size
- Colour schemes and low contrast
- The user agent
- The FOLD – THERE IS NO FOLD since we never know where it’s going to be from one browser/user to the next!!
[Drew gets all fervant and placard-wavey saying There Is No Fold]
Conclusion
Of course, we all know that life’s not so black and white, and at different times, we may have to sit in different camps. So it was a nice way of stimulating some light-hearted debate, but there’s definitely no “right” answer on this one!