RE: Development standards for the World ( was RE:ASPThresholdinformation )

It's sort-of two sides to the same coin in that the end result is
functionally similar, but I think it provokes a different development
methodology.  If you start with the fancy stuff and degrade, the
developers are working with the mindset of fancy new features vs.
overall content & functionality.  If you design for the baseline, you
design to meet the business goals and then 'pretty it up' for the users
with the latest browsers.

Also note that the time necessary to get a working site deployed should
be less if you code to the minimum and then enhance.  That minimum
version can be tested/deployed as soon as it's done and enhanced content
can be added as it is developed.  It would seem to me that you would get
a working and functional site more quickly vs. having the developers
doing all of the fancy stuff and then going back to re-work non-fancy
equivalents.

The small site I maintain on our iSeries, used by about 1000 unique
people a month and a few hundred a day, is mostly straight HTML with a
small bit of Javascript here and there, none of which is essential to
the functionality or appearance.  Some of the HTML is generated by
net.data but it is still HTML to the client.  Any browser that supports
tables will have full functionality and equivalent look and feel.

John A. Jones, CISSP
Americas Information Security Officer
Jones Lang LaSalle, Inc.
V: +1-630-455-2787  F: +1-312-601-1782
john.jones@xxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of James H. H.
Lampert
Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2005 10:08 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Development standards for the World ( was
RE:ASPThresholdinformation )

"Jones, John (US)" wrote:
 
> Don't degrade gracefully; enhance appropriately.  That's the better 
> business decision as the company's goal should be to reach the desired

> audience first and add 'wow factor' and advanced functionality for the

> advanced/up-to-date/fringe audience members later.

Two sides of the same coin: if you code to a browser-independent
standard, then "enhance appropriately," then a graceful degradation is
assured.

Of course, everything is relative to the target audience of a web site:
if it is for internal use in a large corporation where official
corporate software standards are enforced on a draconian or even fascist
level, then browser-independence is irrelevant (but in such an
environment, why bother with a web site or browsers at all?) Likewise,
if the raison d'etre of one's web site is to distribute Flash content,
then graceful degradation is simply a matter of turning away
incompatible clients at the home page.

But since my own web site is targeted at the general public, and the
content is pure HTML, I choose to develop one that doesn't care what
browser is used.

--
James H. H. Lampert
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