your thoughts on the "perfect" website

Yes.



So you're saying he's smart, and that smart people can't figure out the navigation?

Or are you calling him stupid? If so, why not say it directly, neh?

Sounds to me like I did. But look, I don't want to insult anyone (tho' saying that makes me look like a hypocrite). I want to bring art to the Internet. Is that such a bad thing?

Plus, here's another way to look at things:

What kind of site would you remember, want to visit again and maybe show to your friends: a dull, "classic" one or one that made you stop and think for a second? One with arborescent navigation structure or one with an ingenious nav system? Plain ol' Microsoft.com or a site that made you smile or even shiver?

My experience with design has tought me that the actual product you're selling or displaying is just a pretext for potential greatness. So the content as I define it has little to do with the site's value. (eg. you can make a site about trash very funny, serious or even abominable. Why not all three and let the user choose?) But some (read "most") think that "content" is the actual text on the site. No, people, that's also part of the design.

Fiveseven, no one has a problem with bringing art to the internet.



Can you see now, no-one has a problem with sites being beautiful and artistic, but its the attitude that you seem to be promoting that only visual aspects of a website matter and everything else can go to hell:
This is incorrect, in fact. I can take the blocks of text and use CSS to present them with any amount of graphical content and art you want. It would remain beautiful to the "normal" user on a pc with a graphical browser, but it will download damn fast, still be friendly with a text browser, with a screen reader, users with other disabilities, with search engines and even on the 150px wide screen on my shiny new mobile phone. Now I'm sorry if you don't care about this type of user, because they don't see your graphics, but the internet is not a poster and a good website designer will be designing for the users, all the users, not just a select group.

Bring Visual Art to the internet, just don't get tunnel vision and disregard everything else that is important. You say that you want to make the internet better, so do that. Help to make all aspects of the internet better.

I know what CSS can do. Do you ? http://www.scottschiller.com/
It could have been done in Flash and it probably would have loaded a litle faster. But it's a show-off site.
And you can add all the CSS you want to a block of text, make it pink and fuzzy, but it will still be a block of text. Haven't seen many blocks of text in an art museum. (and remember we're not talking about literature)

Some other examples : http://www.aleart.net/
For text is not the only way to communicate.

And you say the Intenet is not all visual. Indeed, nowadays you can add sound. What are you doing right now? You're reading some text off you're computer's display.

vis-u-al (vizh'ue uhl) adj.
1. of or pertaining to seeing or sight: a
visual image.
2. used in seeing: the visual sense.
3. optical.
4. perceptible by the sense of sight; visible.

Don't tell me you can smell or touch what I'm writing right now. If you have a screen reader, you could hear it. So what does that mean? It means that the Internet is, indeed, strictly audiovisual.
I know what you're trying to say, you're saying that it's more than graphic :

graph-ic (graf'ik) adj.
...
6. of or pertaining to the graphic arts.

Which I never disagreed to. I'm just trying to make you see that no matter what and how much programming a webmaster will use, the end user can only see the end result, which is, in the end, strictly audiovisual.

But that's not even the main argument. My initial point is that with the increasing use of broadband connections, download times should be less of an issue for web-designers and they should NEVER copy "standard" sites like Amazon.com or Yahoo.com or whatever and they should GO WILD when designing, free their minds so the end user can, too.

And about compatibility with text browsers/ mobiles/ etc. : media-specific document versions have been invented. That way you can optimize a site for each media without compromising. But unfortunately most webmasters go like "why make 3 good sites when I can make 1 bad one?"

Thats much more to do with javascript, the CSS usage is limited to controlling widths and heights, font colours etc. the newbie-ish basics of CSS. On a technical level that site sucks ass for so many reasons, but I digress.
You can add graphics and all the art you want using CSS as well. Are you proposing that we don't use text at all in our websites? No, we use text and graphics together.
Not being funny, but I was on that site for well over two minutes and still not 100% certain what they do there, or if they even do anything at all. Thats not good communication.

So html is a language for creating things that are visual? Really? I think someone needs to go check up on what html, the backbone of our internet, really is. I'm not even going to try and argue against ignorance on that one.

You initial point, as I recall, was that you can't have well programmed sites that look good too. My point is that the two can be achieved side by side and any half decent website designer should be aiming to achieve that, not just limiting themselves to one field, be that field graphic design or multimedia production or seo or usability or whatever.

I totally agree that designers should try to be original, I hate dull-looking sites, but download times are still important as broadband connections are in the minority. And we should be looking at semantics and accessibility and paying attention to user needs. I'm sure you are aware that many surveys have been carried out on what the "average" internet user wants. roughly 1/3 - 1/2 are more likely to come back to your site if it has multimedia content, and 1/2 - 2/3 are more likely to come back if they can find the information/product they want quickly. Very vague figures, because those a rough trends and there is no "average" user. All we can see is that both sides are important to a huge percentage of our potential userbase, so neither side should be ignored.

So we give people what they want, attractive, media rich sites, that load quickly, can be found easily on search engines and have decent, intuitive navigation. We give everyone what they want, no matter if they can see or if they are using a pc or a palmtop, no matter what browser they have and regardless of browser settings and whether they have 3rd party plug-ins. Everyone should be able to access the information on your site. Can you free your mind enough to think about that for a moment? I know actually implementing such a thing is not simple, it takes planning and a proper understanding of what you are doing to manage it, but it is possible.

Please check back to all my other posts where I have agreed with you on all matters of art being important. I never once disagreed with that. I'm just saying you need to look at the bigger picture of the internet with multimedia and art as one part of it.

I'd go down the road of making one good site, without compromise on any level, without media-specific versions. But maybe thats just good old-fashioned common sense on my part, and actually knowing what I'm doing....

I believe it was gsv2com who said in one of his posts that the essence of the internet is information, not design...I couldn't agree more.

Design is only a tool to present the information you are trying to relay to the user and the same can be said for audio on a lot of sites nowadays as well.

With that in mind:

// The perfect website provides the information I want to access at no more than 2 clicks away.

// The design, color scheme and layout should make sense according to the content and purpose of the website.

// Flow. My eyes should not have any difficulty navigating through design or information.

// As far as functionality and technology used...I'll leave that to the web designer but as long the above three are followed and I'm not sitting around waiting too long for something to load (I'm on broadband for cryin out loud) I'm fine.

// Originality. Thats a term lacking in these threads I think. I remember an instructor in college told me that Originality is the art of concealing your secrets...well, that may be true, but I think today with creative minds working together and feeding off eachother there are those who see outside the box and produce new trends, looks and styles which make way for a new generation of concepts a la 2advanced.com. Don't be afraid to try something new.

For the most part, I think I covered what I wanted to share in regards to a "perfect website." But in the end as mentioned before in this thread...nothing is really perfect...after all, these website are developed by us humans.

I agree with gsv2com. While some websites may be prettier and more art-like than others, what makes sales are words. The design is supposed to emphasize the message behind the words, to reinforce the sale. Maybe some differentiation is needed between a purely artistic site which exists only for eye/brain candy and a commercial-centric site whose intent it is to sell someone (everyone hopefully) something. When speaking about the latter, I would say the perfect site:

1. Has super easy navigation. Meaning the disabled and dumb can follow it and get to your point of sale.

2. The site is specific and useful. Not like a hemp jewelery store that also sells web design.

3. Content rich, content specific, sales specific content in a natural tone.

Tada!

While w3.org say:



Again, those words: DISPLAY, how it LOOKS.
I have a feeling W3 know what they're talking about.

I think I've used arguments that any rational human would consider sufficient. I would like to hear some other people's opinions, people that are not obsessed with download times.



That is the most degrading thing I have ever heard. I'm talking about art and you're talking about MONEY ?! If I wasn't a cold-blooded bastard I'd burst into tears. So I see it's not worth it. I'll just have to leave this community for there is no point in asking turtles to fly.

The goal of a website is content/information delivery.

Like - DUUH!, but when are you going to accept the fact that text is not the only way to deliver information? And after that, when are you going to see that it's not the best way, eiter? To make it clear for those with low IQ: You can display text in both the book and the movie, but the movie can also deliver sound and graphics... animated graphics, even (it may sound dull to you, but think about your forefathers) !

You're just the kind of people that would look at a revolutionary, pure genius website and go like "I don't like it 'cause it uses nested tables" or "It takes too much time to load". Oh, wait... you already did!

I see stupidity is the only real flaw of mankind. The others can be fixed.

uh-huh.

This guy has to be a joke.

Except for the fact that the W3C never said that. Searching on Google, I get no matches for that quotation on w3.org (but if you have a link that proves otherwise, go ahead and post it).

And you are wrong anyway - - HTML was designed to semantically describe data. It was the browsers with their proprietary extensions such as the FONT tag, CENTER tag, etc, that moved HTML in the direction of visual display. Want evidence? Read the HTML 2 Specification. Right in the introduction: "HTML documents are SGML documents with generic semantics that are appropriate for [i]representing information[i] from a wide range of domains." ( http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/html ... .html#SEC1 )

HTML is still a language for structural markup - - CSS is for presentation. The W3C also says that, in its most up-to-date draft of HTML:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/intro/intro.html#h-2.4.1

I specifically distinguished between sites for content/business and showoff/art sites.

Ho hum, I think we all did, but never mind, I'm sorry you can't keep up with the conversation, but you really can't blame us for that.

Really? I think you will find that words are the best method of communication. Imagine a conversation with someone, where you are trying to tell them something important. No imagine you can't use any words (and that includes sign language). Now how easy is that going to be? You can make as much movement and noise as you like, but try conveying the paragraph "I'm just going to go down the shops to get some orange juice and coke. I'll be stopping of on the way to pick up my prescription from the pharmacy and probably have a chat with the guy in the corner shop whilst I'm there, so I'll be gone around a half hour. See you later" without words. Go on, see it as a challenge, as we are all stupid and don't understand, why not show us - prove you are right, show us how better it is to communicate that without words. And before you think I'm taking the piss, I'm not. I genuinely want to see what you come up with.

You see, if you have an art site, then the main thing you are trying to communicate is your artistic skills, along with the associated emotions and feeling behind the work. In this case a fully multimedia site will be appropriate, because there is no tangible message. You can communicate emotion better with imagery. But you try creating a news site thats fully multimedia, with full 2 minute intro's on every story. It's not going to work, because for many sites, multimedia does little to enhance the site, or improve it's functionality.

Yep, once again, no one has a problem with multimedia, no one has said multimedia has no place on the internet, but obviously we didn't put enough illustrations with our text so you failed to understand. Maybe we could produce a special little cartoon for you, with a talking dog named Spot in it.

Seriously man, if you want to argue against people, the best bet is to try and understand their viewpoint first and make your arguments relevant, because at the moment you are making a fool of yourself. And just to prove the relevance point:

The topic is about the perfect website. We established that website design is much more than just visual art, yet you persist in only talking about art. I really am sorry you are far to hung up on this one aspect of website design to fully appreciate the entire field.