HW: Mission Control Website

[nycademon at ATTBI.COM]

Rik Rx sez--

> Hi Dave you make a few good points, however your notes are based on EXISTING
> pages, not the yet to be unleashed site....

Not surprising, since we haven't seen the new site.

> Each new encarnation of browser brings probs, such as our great friends at
> Micro$oft not including the Java Engine in their shiny new browser.

Hmm, maybe the Microsoft guys aren't quite as stupid as I thought.

> Do we
> assume people (such as those on a 28.8k dialup) will bother to do the 6mb
> Java engine download just to see one of our applets?

Hell no! I sure wouldn't! But then, I doubt you're all that concerned about these people anyway, since you're bloating their download with ridiculous applet script in the first place.

> Or take all Java off
> the site so that nobody gets it? Trikky decisions need to be made 4 sure.

Well, if it isn't worth downloading the Java engine, is it worth including the scripts on your site?

> That's why the newie is taking ages.. it's hard to create "something for
> everyone" when everyone has very different needs. This is easy when we
> create commercial sites that are targetted at a very different sector, but
> the brief for the HW site is to reflect the rich visual environment that HW
> demands by default.

I've seen your "business" site, and I don't think any of your (genuine?) commercial sites (which appear, for the most part, to be as unfinished as the new "Mission Control") are significantly different. Let's face it, you're into ugly graphics, clashing colors, proprietary tags, and gee whiz freebie javascripts.
There are scads of "rich visual" sites on the web, which do not have cheesy animated gifs and "effects" that can be seen on one browser, but not another. Maybe Dave Brock (or whoever is overseeing your "efforts") should deep six the brief.

> The fades are trikky - some like, some don't - and it's not JavaScript as
> someone claimed, but a IE only METAtag transition. Maybe we should have a
> democratic referenum ?

Interesting to see you cite browser issues and rag on Microsoft while employing their proprietary tags. It speaks volumes for your approach to web design.

Guido