Thursday, June 07, 2007

@media - High-Noon Shoot Out: Design vs Implementation

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!

2 comments:

Sheila Farrell said...

Yeah lots of fabulous posts to read :-) I'm going to savour these over a glass of wine when I get back from Glastonbury.

It might take me a few days to dry from the rain so I'll have my computer and lots of blog posts to keep me company.

TTFN, Sheila

Caz Mockett said...

I'll probably have a few more added by the time you get back from Glasto.

Enjoy the music and the mud!

Caz