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Subject: 
Re: LEGO Inspired Fonts For Macintosh And Windows
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.off-topic.geek
Date: 
Fri, 18 May 2001 13:20:47 GMT
Viewed: 
264 times
  
In lugnet.general, Matthew Gerber writes:
In lugnet.general, Johannes Keukelaar writes:

<pet-peeve>
Please leave the size of my browser window alone! I'll determine how
large I want the window to be. That is a very _rude_ bit of
javascript.
</pet-peeve>

[What follows is not directed at anyone in particular, especially Johannes.
My brother and I were arguing just this point the last few days, and I think
it may make good discussion fodder. No flame intended.]

Now that's an interesting point. Do you often complain to book, magazine or
newspaper publishers about the physical size of their offerings? Would you
turn down a brochure about something you find really interesting because it
was printed on legal rather than letter size paper?

Different medium. You are "printing" on my machine, not your own paper. That
said, yes, I would (and have, and will) turn down physical things that were
inappropriately sized.

I created my site the way I wanted it to be. I determined that I would like
to make the size of my pages a certain width and height to be most readable
and pleasing to my, and hopefully others, eyes. I've done this with other
sites, and will do it again.

I used to have this viewpoint as well, then I realised that I had the
relationship between the designer and customer all wrong. As the designer I
should not dictate to a customer how things ought to be done. Instead, I
should make my site work well at a variety of sizes. Now, that may mean that
when resized, text reflows in a way that is not always perfectly pleasing
but so be it.

I won't hold up my old work as an example but my more recent work operates
adequately at 640x480 and takes advantage of larger real estate when it is
made available, but does not have the arrogant presumption to assume that I
know better than the customer what is desired.

In my mind, it all comes down to the designer's eye, what the creator wants
to get across visually. I personally HATE either all of the extra space left
on the right side of my screen when I go to a site that is designed smaller
than the last one I was at, and HATE EVEN MORE having to constantly click
the expand box to get the full scope of a site that is bigger than the last
one I was at. I'm constantly resizing the darn window, ya' know?

Both of those sites are flawed in that they are using fixed layout instead
of using the ability of the browser to reflow material. You should be
complaining to the designers instead of crippling the browser even more in
your own work.

I immediately resized your site, and you're right, it did look bad at a
larger width, because you aren't using tables, width=% and all the other
standard tricks to cope with dynamic sizing, you're just stuck at a fixed width.

When I ran across this JavaScript, I thought "Hey! Now THAT'S useful!".

And I thought "Hey! Now THAT'S obnoxious!".

So I
used it. And so far, I'm happy with the results *as a designer*. Now, as
users, what do others think? Well, that's why I wrote this little rant. What
do YOU think?

You are incorrect, sir. See above.

However you can get away with it better at a fan site than you can in real
life. Designers that work on my commercial projects do not get a free hand
to do as they see fit artistically, they are strongly reminded who the
customer is and why the customer is usually right and why the customer needs
to be catered to instead of dictated to.

Hope that helps.

++Lar



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: LEGO Inspired Fonts For Macintosh And Windows
 
(...) Ah, but no one is forcing you to view the material! You make a concious decision to partake of what is offered. (...) Here again though, I have chosen to participate, and should live with what is offered-their vision of what their site should (...) (23 years ago, 18-May-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: LEGO Inspired Fonts For Macintosh And Windows
 
(...) Just as soon as someone comes up with a way to type at a diagonal to a receeding horizon point. The physics just won't work in 2D space. (...) [What follows is not directed at anyone in particular, especially Johannes. My brother and I were (...) (23 years ago, 18-May-01, to lugnet.general)

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