explaining limitations of web design
Everyone:
How do I explain limitations of web design to those that I work for without using technical words.
Thank you.
Stephanie
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Whoa! 
That's a tricky question!
Could you try analogies? Compare the web design stuff with more familiar everyday activities? It's not easy to come up with comparable issues, I know, but it might work.
I sometimes use carpentry as an analogy for web standards. Building tag soup web pages without standards is like building a house where every doorway is a different size, etc. My comparisons usually don't hold up to close scrutiny, but the trick is to know when to move on to the next topic, before they realize that.
Tommy has left the building
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Comrades
Limitations of web design ??
Umm, talk up the possibilities and opportunities made possible by the medium as a communication tool, and if someone asks about limitations, say "Anything's possible, I just haven't figured it out yet"
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| Malarkey wrote: |
| Anything's possible, I just haven't figured it out yet" |
I prefer: "Anything's possible, I just haven't figured out how to make it work in IE yet."
A good analogy I heard over at codingforums went something like this...
"This is architecture; we're building the web. You can build the coolest looking house in the world, but if you build it with sticks and styrofoam, it'll fall down."
That's not an analogy for the limitations involved, more for the reasoning behind our techniques.
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| stephw wrote: |
| Everyone:
How do I explain limitations of web design to those that I work for without using technical words. Thank you. Stephanie |
i'd say this is far too vague a question. limitations with regards to what ? accessibility ? bandwidth ? current technology ?
otherwise, it sounds like "what's the limitation of design", whose obvious answer, as malarkey mentions, is "there is no limitation...only the designer's imagination"
Patrick H. Lauke / webmaster / University of Salford
co-lead: WaSP Accesibility Task Force
take it to the streets ... WaSP Street Team
personal: splintered | photographia | redux
co-author: Web Accessibility - Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance
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Thank you for your suggestions. The question was vague and I apologize. I guess that what I have is someone who is used to desktop publishing. How do I explain that in web design, that you don't know what the end user is going to see? There are many varieables such as monitor size, screen resolution, browser and version, PC or Mac, etc. Maybe it is not as much of a problem as I thought.
As for accessibility, the people that I work for know that it is important. They only see the rough outlines, so that don't know that some things like sidebars can still be done if they are done correctly.
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Hey Stephanie, welcome to this forum too.
I don't know if you got my email the other day but in case you didn't, I recommended that you visit the http://www.diveintoaccessibility.org web site - I find it to be an excellent one to describe the types of barriers that accessibility tries to break down and different techniques to accomplish the results.
It may have the ammunition you are looking for.
Jules
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I got the e-mail. Thank you.
Stephanie
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