It’s always a pleasure to interview a 9rules member and get their views on current web design issues. It’s even better to interview six at once. So without further ado, I present the 9rulers in question (in alphabetical order.)

Marco Jardim | http://blog.thewhitehawk.com/
Tammie Lister | http://www.diaryofawebsite.com
James Mathias | http://leihu.com/
John Phillips | http://www.jwphill3.com
Phil Renaud | http://philrenaud.com
Elliot Swan | http://www.elliotswan.com

And so, to the questions…

1) In October 2006, I made a small rant about accessibility being for all - Do you agree that communities discussing standards often mistake accessibility for only ‘catering to blind users’ ?

Marco: Although I have never interacted with communities that discuss standards, if they truly believe that accessibility only helps the visually impaired then they are very mistaken.

In real life, it is easy to associate Accessibility to people with physical disabilities. On the Internet, things are a bit different, although the basis is the same: making things usable by as many people as possible. There are dozens of different browsers and hundreds of different versions on thousands of different devices. They all have different characteristics and functionalities.

By developing something with accessibility in mind, you are making sure that a very large percentage of all those users will be able to access your information, in the best possible way. To me, accessibility is something I do with “graceful degradation” in mind and not visual-impairment. And that is because sites that follow the accessibility, and standards, guidelines, are usually prepared for any browser that any user, and not just those with impairments, might use.

Tammie: Accessiblity is so often seen as purely being about disabilities that it’s not even funny now. Perhaps once upon a time it was pushed as a notion in that area and as a result the consciousness assumes even the word accessibility means disabled use. I think we need a new word that hasn’t got outside the design world connotations as the word ‘accessible’ is so linked into people’s brains as meaning accessible to disabled people.

James: I do agree. I have found that most folks mistake accessibility with disabilities, not solely blindness, but other disabilities as well.

John: Yeah and that’s kind of funny to me. Of course blind users are very important, but there is so much information that goes into designing sites with web standards aside from just catering to blind users. Theses people seem to forget that it’s also catering to old browsers that aren’t mainstream, mobile devices (with tons of browsers), giving pages visibility through search engines and so forth.

Phil: If standardists think that accessibility is just about the blind, then they must be a tad blind themselves. It’s about ease of use, it’s about backwards compatibility with emergent technologies, and it’s about setting a human standard for site design.

Elliot: Many do, but of course true accessibility will cater to everybody in your audience and make sure that they can use it as easily as possible.

2) Name and explain one reason to use (and promote) standards and accessibility in the world of web design and development.

Marco: Tug of war. It’s much easier to progress and evolve if everyone is pulling from the same side of the rope. Regarding Accessibility: We already have too much discrimination in our world, and in some cases, it’s hard and/or expensive to make things accessible to those which are are physically impaired. For example: a stair elevator. But on the Internet, if we all follow some simple, and easy, guidelines we can make our information accessible to almost everyone.

Tammie: One reason I would say would be for sanity and that opens a whole bucket of other reasons. From creating clean, manageable code you can rework easily - through to getting more ‘bums on the seat’ for your website and back again to using the right tools for the job. There are so many reasons it should be more try and find one why you shouldn’t.

James: There is not just one reason, but I believe using standards and accessibility in your web development projects is the only way that makes any real sense.

John: My reason for promoting web standards would be accessibility part. If I’m a company with a site built with web standards, than it would be comforting to know that the information on my would be presentable no matter what type of device of browser you are using. Content is obviously the most important part of any website, therefore, people should be able to visit you site through whatever type of device to get that information. They shouldn’t be held back because they are using an old version of Internet Explorer.

Phil: One reason? My clients would probably want me to say “profitability”, but I’m going to say “innovation”. When there’s a standard ground level established, companies and designers and developers are all able to harmonize in ways unseen before. The era of collaborative development has arrived some time ago, but this has certainly opened the doors to increasing numbers of designers and developers.

Elliot: Usability. People often get so caught up in making sure that every bit of code validates, that they’ve passed all the accessibility tests, and that they’ve put their little W3C badges somewhere where everybody can see them that in doing so they miss the point completely–it’s not about passing tests; it’s about creating an experience that can truly be experienced by everybody in your audience regardless of their vision, browser, or operating system. Standards and accessibility guidelines are there to help designers and developers achieve this goal, and should be treated carefully. In some occasions, to really make the experience beneficial to all we have to actually step around the rules, realizing that the web isn’t perfect–for example, using proprietary code for IE6 PNG support. It won’t validate, but it gets us to what the standards are trying to achieve.

3) Web2.0 is such an extremely popular design trend at the moment. What are the pros and cons of this style in your view?

Marco: The Web 2.0 is (basically) a collection of different elements like: bigger font sizes, strong colors (sparingly used), gradients and reflections, etc, etc. None of those said elements deteriorates a design or makes it less accessible, if used correctly of course. Since these elements are very used lately, the user gains a sense of “familiarity” with the websites that follow this style and can focus on the content better instead of having to become re-acquainted with every different style of design he encounters.

The negative aspect is the repetitiveness I guess, but there are always new trends coming and going so the styles never stay the same for very long. In fact, the Web 2.0 style as we know it wasn’t always the same. It started off as something simple, and as each designer adopted it it started gaining new characteristics, so there is always something new being added to keep the designs fresh.

Tammie: The biggest con has to be the formula that many assume equals a web 2.0 style. It’s almost seen like a set of design rules to apply for instant success and ‘modern web design’. There should be no assumption that there is a pick list of web 2.0’s musts - reflective text, gradients. large text and other things have been around for a long time and are not solely in the realm of web 2.0. The pros mean a marginally better looking web - if it is prone to looking like an attack of the clones at times. Couple with that the fact that it’s seeing a looking at user interface and the front along with the backend - a turn away from buying a template off a site and thinking that will do.

James: The pros are, every client wants the style, and it’s fairly easy to achieve. The cons are it’s made the web a stagnant, repetitive and boring thing to look at, in general. “Web 2.0″ is the bane of the industry and must be put down like a tired old dog whose reached the end of his “good old days”.

Can you tell I’m tired of the trend, and more importantly the re-packaging of old to appear new?

The sooner “Web 2.0″ goes the way of the dinosaur, the sooner I can rest easy and begin producing as original and un-tethered to trends web-sites for my clients as I do for myself.

John: Well one of the pros to this would have to be that it brought a new style of design to the web overall. It gave the web a fresh look and brought about new ideas in how to present content to users. That has been the best thing about the design style of Web 2.0. The con, in my opinion, would have to be people misusing the term in thinking that Web 2.0 is only an aesthetic term. In other words, “designers” thinking that Web 2.0 is only how the site looks. I saw a lot of this on Digg, where a link would be posted and you would see comments saying “It doesn’t look Web 2.0 enough.” Another con would be seeing sites that seem to overuse these trends, just for the sake of it being a trend. I’m sure there are more than enough reasons why this whole Web 2.0 aesthetic trend came about, but on some sites, it seems to have been taken too far and abused.

Phil: Pros? Catchy style, ability to establish a modern brand and have it situated well within it’s timeframe. Easy on the eyes (when used properly), allows for more site cohesion than web 1.0: people get a certain feel for a site and it just seems intuitive from that point on. Before, everything felt like it was juuuuuuust above code level. Now we’re in the atmosphere.

Cons? Overkill, buzzkilled. Saying one is a web2.0 designer is generally met with the rolling of eyes, if not the gnashing of teeth.

Elliot: The gradients, curved corners, and all the other Web 2.0 trends can still work for some sites (obviously, as that’s the only way it could get so popular), but it’s been used to the point where in the wrong context it’s becoming cliche. The problem is that because it’s so popular people can throw some gradients on a page and think it’s good design, but in doing so lose the originality and personality that’s so important in branding and design. Using some of the trends is fine, but
it needs to go further than that to create a feel, emotional effect, and personality that matches your company and only your company.

4) When browsing the web design showcases, I often find myself thinking that the least-styled part of many websites is the content. Any tips for sprucing up bland text?

Marco: Before answering your question, let me just say that I agree with your opinion completely. I’ve bought various design-related books in the past, and my latest purchases are all been related with typography because I feel that it is a very “unappreciated” aspect of web design.

There are simple guidelines to help improve the typography on a website, and also various recommendations. For example:

• You should never use more than two different Font Families.
• If you choose “justify” for your content text’s alignment (like I did on my blog), it makes the text seem more organized, however, it decreases the speed at which the viewers read your text, because their eyes have to adapt to different word spaces on each line.
• You should try to limit the number of words-per-line. There is no golden number for them, because each have different lengths and the space that they occupy depend on your CSS definitions and your Font’s Family, however, I guess that it’s safe to say that you should limit them between 10 and 20 words per line. This is because it’s harder to read text on a computer monitor rather than on a page, and the more words, or longer text lines you have, the harder it will be to read your content.

If you have ever read an Internet Forum or BBS, it’s very likely that you’ve probably missed or skipped a line of text because of the high number of words-per-line.

Tammie: Any web designer isn’t doing their job if they don’t take all elements of the design into place and this includes content. My tips would be headers, leading styling, line-height and also the use of sectioning styling to link meaning into text. Thinking of text as a graphic is also a good one. Think of it as something that is part of the design, not something that has to be there or is just put on at the last minute. It should be considered at the very start. I often try to get real copy not just the lorem ipsum filler text - it helps the client visualise what the site will look like and focuses you on including that in the design.

James: Contextual text is not supposed to be fancy and styled, it’s meant to be read and comprehended. I think looking for ways to make the text stand out more should be focused on whitespace, line-spacing, kerning, leading, gutters, line-length, margins and so forth, the negative space we don’t see that makes our text more legible, that’s where our focus should be centered.

John: I really have no tips for styling content, other than making sure it sticks out. Since it is the most important part of a website, you wouldn’t want to add too much to it that would detract people from actually consuming information. Other than choosing proper typography, I don’t see a need tamper with the content.

Phil: Increased Line spacing, justified text only when needed (read: visible border is close), use of strong and em elements to add accents, careful separation of paragraphs. Indentation. Nobody indents!

Elliot: Jeff Croft has been doing a lot of great work in that area using photos, sideshows, and other visual content displayed
uniquely alongside the text, much like you’d find in print design. The key there is the custom CMS which allows him to create a different feel for each article, while his brand is still always obvious. I’m loving that, and would like to see a lot more of that kind of stuff around (and suspect we will very soon).

5) Last but not least. If you had a big red button in front of you that could eliminate any design trend in an instant, what would you choose?

Marco: There is a trend that has been bothering me for a while because it goes against most of the things I learned from my Accessibility and Design books: websites that change their layout completely depending on the section your visiting.

As visually appealing as those sites might be (usually they are), I don’t want to learn how to navigate a site every time I visit it, or every time I visit a different one with the same “style”. If people understood well enough why “Welcome Pages” had to go, then I guess that it’s only common sense that they must understand that a website’s content must have the same (or almost exactly the same) structure, as it’s entry page.

Tammie: I would have to say it would for me be more what people ‘think’ a particular design trend means. Using that as my response it would be the whole web 2.0 unicorn – mystical – fairy - add a reflection – drop – a – shadow – primary – colours – stripe – background – lump – a – gradient – on – it – just – add – water – instant – successful - design, trend. Design should never be about formulas to the extent you are asking for something like buying a cake mixture from a supermarket - if you want just add water muffins buy a template.

James: See answer to three.

John: Those badges! Those seem to have gotten abused the minute I saw them start popping up. I saw very few cases of them actually serving as something useful to a website. For the most part, they just seemed like a decoration.

Phil: I think I’d have to eliminate big red buttons :) (Andrew: Never!!!)

Elliot: Hmm…Good question. I can’t think of a particular “trend” that I’d eliminate, rather bad uses of those trends.

- - -

Many thanks to those who took part. It is much appreciated. Readers, I hope you enjoyed the group interview. If you care to ask any questions, fire away now!

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