Yeah, Derek. Where are the cool buttons? Where are the rollovers, the pop-ups, the Flash animations? Aren't you a web developer? What kind of web developer just has plain black-on-white pages? You don't even have navigation buttons!
24th February 2003 - Cool buttons, Funky effects ... these are things you will find somewhere else. Yes, I am a web developer and to tell you the truth, I HATE rollovers. To me, they represent the triumph of style over substance. You see, the more time we spend making graphics or animations, the less time we spend getting the back-end stuff right. Unfortunately, it's the back-end e-commerce stuff that really presents the savings you get from the internet, not the pretty gloss. When you visit a site, would you rather find all the information you want and make bookings, pay bills etc? Or would you rather move your mouse around the screen and see neat-o whiz-bangery? I used to be very vocal in favour of functionality over aesthetics, even when clients saw it the other way. (And they nearly always did, having mostly never used the Internet.) However, over the years I've learned that the client is always right. After all, they're the ones paying me, and not you the reader . If clients only want to pay for the pretty shit then that's what I give them. This time however, I'm the client, and I want this site clean and simple. I want these pages to live or die on the strength of the words alone. I hope that I can refute the Golden Rule of Internet Development:
"Flashy design will compensate for poor content every time."
As for the navigation, I find that it takes up space on the page and time to maintain. I plan to have these pages so well laid-out that you won't need any other buttons than the 'Back' and 'Forward' on your browser.
Tell me if I'm right or not.