[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> Re: Disassociate Webdesign from Usability

[Craig Brozefsky <craig@red-bean.com>]

brian carroll <human@architexturez.com> writes:

>  while having HTML skills, and CSS seems easy enough, the aspects of
>  more complex CGI scripts and advanced functionality seem to me like
>  they will become either easier or harder to implement. will there
>  ever be a day when someone, novice-intermediate, will be able to
>  get a web database system up and running without programming
>  skill?.

The Apple WebObjects Direct-To-Web system is pretty good at that, mind
you that it is proprietary.  I wouldn't say that someone "without
programming skill" could use it, but your average office or home power
user could operate it effectively.

> i ask because a simple browser detector to serve multiple CSS pages,
> is, for a small site more than just HTML/CSS and a GUI authoring
> program.

With Apache it's a matter of SSIs which turn on an environment
variable containing the browser identification string.  However, there
is little too no need to have multiple CSS stylesheets in order to
customize for particular browsers.  With CSS, any need to customize
for a particular browser is what they are trying to avoid.  Even then,
you can do this thru the use of media types (I can't recall what the
term used in the CSS spec is) which are like "television" "print"
etc... or any abitrary string you want.

> the idea of 'classes' of websites comes to mind, such as classes of
> drivers licenses. will there always be a full spectrum of
> sites. will they all raise in complexity. or will the low end go
> under at some point. and its content. i'm wondering...  brian

Well, I've never left a website with content interesting to me,
because it was too plain, or in text, or too static.  In contrast, I
routinely have left websites with interesting content because they
were garish, used media that I could not play on my completely
non-proprietary system, or they had broken dynamic elements.

I don't see the low end going under without major changes in the
transport and display technologies, like when Gopher was replaced with
HTTP (and even then you can still get gopher sites thru gateways).


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