Page Bloat and Download Scope Creep
Thursday, August 14th, 2008
As a web design / development professional a big part of our job is ensuring the deliverables actually work in the outside world - not just on broadband or the company intranet. Design gone mad tends to call for one more image, an extra widget or another kick-arse feature like a movie or a slideshow. And, sometimes you can see the beginning of this when you watch navigation elements get pushed below the fold in order to appease the business entities calling for more design. Remember, those stakeholders aren’t paid to understand the craft. That’s our job as web professionals.
Here’s the crux of it - this is the web. It’s a technology that we interact with differently than television or magazines, it’s not a multimedia extravaganza or an exercise in the finer points of print on paper. The challenge comes from not having complete control over the users’ environment, but designing around that limitation and making it work better, smarter, transparently. We have a limited set of reliable fonts. We have no control over the user’s speed of access, their personal viewing habits or culture, and definately not a skerrick of control over the equipment they’re using (including a screen’s age, model, size, resolution, quality). It’s not just Apple versus PC. We can test sites on calibrated Mac monitors until the cows come home but any web professional with a bit of salt in their gills understands that most of the world isn’t using calibrated monitors, for a start. Most of the world isn’t us.
