[gland]

I have a friend that had her jewelry web-site done by a professional. Nicely done but NONE of the images were optimized. My friend has a DSL line so everything looked fine to her. I'm on 56K dialup and I noticed right away that pages were taking a long time to load.

This is a good way to loose customers.

I'm now optimizing her images.

[chiquitita]

Originally posted by G. Couch


However, in many countries internet access is still charged by the minute or hour and in order to facilitate faster browsing, people will often turn off graphics or features like Flash or JavaScript.

The original post was speaking of member's sites, most of whom I think are in the US and Canada. I think most who have businesses are catering to people in these two countries and that is what I was referring to.
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gland - If your friend's images weren't optimized, then it wasn't a professional who did the work. The word "professional" is thrown around alot these days by everyone when it comes to web design. Unfortunately, when you look at the pages, they are clearly not professional.

[Mike Needham]

Its a difficult point and in some ways a fine line, between accessibility and usability. Graphics that havent been compressed, text that is given a fixed pixel size, these are examples of bad usability, sometimes these same things can also have an impact of accessibility.

One of the main reasons that I refuse to support older browsers is that they are not Standards compliant, they have no support for DOM or CSS, they are generally bereft of any redeeming features. Web designers have a torrid enough time testing in the compliant browsers (which still have a huge variation between what they will recognize), If I ignore the old browsers and concentrate on CSS and DHTML etc... I can ensure that disabled viewers can access my content, change it to suit their needs, I can also ensure that hand held palm tops and other devices (yes including text only browsers) can also access all my content.

If I dare make a corny analogy (of course I dare) Surfing the web without a compliant browser and standard equipment is like expecting shops to stock the latest Hollywood blockbuster on beta-max so that you can experience the movie too and then being mad when all you get is grey fuzz.

Laziness and bad design go hand in hand, not optimizing everything is just plain lazy, but do you also remember to optimize your code? I refute that it is laziness on my part not to provide a sub standard page for non compliant browsers.

[gland]

Chiquitita I guess I did use the word "professional" rather loosely. The HTML was done well. Nice use of CSS-etc.

I just can't figure out why they didn't take a little time to optimize the images.

Gary

[Kevin Connery]

Surfing the web without a compliant browser and standard equipment is like expecting shops to stock the latest Hollywood blockbuster on beta-max

It all comes back to keeping your audience in mind.

A few years ago, BMW (the car folks) created a very pretty site that made very heavy use of QuickTime movies (QTVR, I believe). Since their market was high-end car buyers, they knew their potential customers could afford new computers.

What they neglected to consider was that just because their customers COULD spend a few thousand dollars every year or two didn't mean that they chose to do so. And, at that time, many executives weren't using the net at work--they might not have a computer on their desk.

So they got a lot of people going TO the site, and a lot of people who couldn't SEE the cars. Sales had a [very] minor dip in the subsequent months, and the site was updated. Whether the sales dip was related or simply coincidental, I don't know, but...

Net-geeks often forget that most people aren't on broadband--just because it's relatively cheap doesn't make it a useful expense for many people. The same goes for 17" or larger screens, or high-resolution displays of any size, or multiple monitors, or...

Just because a potential customer CAN spend money or time on their computer (a 'free' browser download that take an hour to download and 3-5 hours to get working for the people who don't know the 'obvious' solutions is NOT free!) doesn't mean they will. The only time this is a truly safe bet is when you're selling software for the net--and the last time I checked, most retouchers were selling fixed images, not software.

Who is your customer? What is it safe to assume they own/use? What do they want from your site? Those are the key questions.

[thomasgeorge]

Kevin makes a good point. Just as a passing comment I would suspect that designing a site to be quick loading, not full of fluff and feathers thus allowing folks to easily and quickly gather the info they need would be the way to go...but I could be, and probably am wrong...Our connection speeds up here are mostly in the 19k range and sites that take too long to load just dont get looked at....I am darn near totally Web ignorant so forgive me if what I just said does not make sense.... Tom

[chiquitita]

What it comes down to is what risk you are willing to take. If you are a professional web designer, it is about making the site as compliant as possible for what your client wants, and if they even care if some people can't view their site. Some of them don't even want to bother - the want what they want on the site regardless of who is able to view it.

As for photo retouchers with their own businesses, you take a risk of loosing a customer with each enhanced feature you put up without an alternative. If you want an ugly, brochure-ware site, with basic information and text, then have at it - you might gain some customers that you would have lost, but you also might loose some that you would have had with a nicer site. Personally, a company's site is a huge factor in whether or not I use their service or buy their product - not the only factor, but a significant one.

[thomasgeorge]

Is it possible to have a "Nicer" ( I assume you mean attractive, eye catching, interesting) without loading it up with items which take a long time to download or require the instillation of special software to enable viewing? I am not being snide here...I have little web experience, no HTML knowledge, just a perspective which originates from having very slow Internet service and hating to sit watching the "fuel gauge" display creep along slower than paint drying. Remember ,not everyone lives in Urban areas with high speed internet access. Shouldnt the goal be to catch the widest audience possible while making the site as user friendly and interesting as possible? Tom

[Kevin Connery]

Shouldnt the goal be to catch the widest audience possible while making the site as user friendly and interesting as possible?

Very close, and certainly usable, but not entirely correct.

The goal is to catch and keep the best qualified audience.

Sometimes that's high-tech users, sometimes it's not. (net software tools vs, well, most anything else)

Sometimes it's people who are very much concerned about presentation, sometimes it's not. (art vs accounting f'rinstance.)

If you don't know who your potential customers are, then 'widest audience possible' IS correct. But most companies have some information about their intended/expected customers, and for most of them, it's not the universal widest. (ABC, NBC, airlines, newspapers, sure. Most people...no.)