Designing for the Unknown
When you design a web page,
you are creating a document that will be viewed under a vast range
of unknown conditions. There are a number of factors that will
directly impact the design and functionality of a web page.
Unknown browsers
There are hundreds of browser
versions in use today. The same page source may look and
function differently depending on the browser rendering it.
Unknown platform
The user’s operating system
also impacts how a web page looks and functions. Some
technologies are better supported on Windows than on a
Macintosh or Unix system. The
platform also affects basic display elements such as
fonts, colors, and form elements.
Unknown user preferences
Every browser is built with
the opportunity for users to set the default appearance of the
pages they view. The user’s settings will override yours, and
there’s not much you can do about it. Not only can users
adjust the fonts and colors, but they may also opt to turn off
basic functionality, such as image display, JavaScript, and
Java support.
Unknown window size
In print, one of the first
things you establish about a project is its trim size (the
size of the printed page). On the Web, there is no way to know
the size of the “page” since browser windows can fill a
variety of monitor resolutions or be resized to any random
dimension.
Unknown connection speed
Most likely, the people
viewing your pages access the Internet at a wide range of
speeds: from high speed T1, cable, and DSL connections all the
way down to pokey 28.8-kilobaud modems. Unless you are
designing specifically for broadband applications, assume the
worst when it comes to connection speeds. The golden rule of
web design is to keep your files as small as possible. On the
Web, graphics should measure just a few kilobytes (K). For
commercial sites, pages with files totaling more than 50K or
60K are considered bloated (although it seems miniscule
compared to file sizes typically used in desktop publishing
for print).
Unknown colors
When you are publishing
materials that will be viewed on computer monitors, you need
to deal with the varying ways computers and browsers handle
color.
Unknown fonts
It may come as a shock to
learn that you cannot really specify fonts on web pages. The
way text appears is a result of browser settings, platform,
and user preferences
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