Flutterby™! : WaSP: They're baaaaack 2002-06-11 21:59:39+00

WaSP: They're baaaaack

2002-06-11 21:59:39+00 by Dan Lyke 3 comments

The Web Standards Project is back. My dissing them gave Flutterby its first big readership boost. This time they seem to be making a more careful statement, but it'd be nice if they could find some good designers; it's still a necessity to be able to turn off the wonky line spacing, either with Ctrl-G in Opera, or by using Lynx or Links. What's up with that, do they think they're still on paper?

But generally, I like this new focus on output rather than consumption, the members have more pages that are actually usable in alternative browsers like Lynx than ever before (still a lot of "[spacer.gif]"s and content that gets missed in text modes), and Flutterby will probably be going XHTML and CSS before too long, hopefully not alienating too many users. So we're finally getting rid of Netscape 4.x at 5 years, just a bit ahead of Jakob Nielsen's predictions.

While we're talking about accessability and standards, I'd be amiss not to mention Mark's new push, use scenarios of a blind user and a color-blind dial-up user, but the SubAverage parody of Mark's stories rules. Speaking of which, anyone else noticed that with modern browsers in-line ads are now much more user-visible than pop-ups?

If you'd seriously like changes to the web site, take some screenshots, post them on the web, and send me the URLs. I'll be happy to make sure that they get seen by the right people.

Dori, the site looks just fine with style sheets turned off (or, surprisingly, in Netscape 4.76(!), which actually looks best of the four browsers I have in front of me right now), much like the gawdawful colors of the original site it's just developed by a designer whose aesthetic and usability sense is not mine. Heck, my very original comments that lead to that rant were mostly aesthetic.

So yeah, actually, this entry is about as positive as I could possibly imagine myself getting on the WaSP.

Now is there any chance you could lay about a virtual meeting of those folks with a clue-by-four and get all of 'em to alt-tag their freakin' images on their own sites? I'll accept image-mapped or <EMBED ...> menus with funky names, but reading through spacer .GIFs gets annoying.

If usability really is the goal of the organization, it'd be nice to see the rest of 'em have as usable sites as yours.

Ah, if you're talking about web designer's own sites, well, that falls into the case of the shoemaker's children. Working web folks rarely have time to do more than just add to the latest client list.

Yesterday, I finally updated the Chalcedony.com site just to say that there wasn't anything there, so please go away. It was probably the first time I've touched it in three years.