Requirements? That’s Sooo ‘90s
Usability and accessibly must be passive to be truly successful. No requirements, no rules, no instructions.
In 1993, when I first started going on the web, I recall almost never being able to visit a web site without having to update a browser plugin or get some new funky thing. It was a real pain because what should have been a quick page load and content perusal ended up being a long process of downloading some update (on dial-up at the time), installation, re-booting, etc. By the time I got everything needed to visit the site in question, I had forgotten why I was checking it out in the first place. I remember that the web was quite aggravating in the ‘90s.
The web was new, the technology developing, there was a lot of updating, change was in the air — and the equipment of the time was barely keeping pace.
Better Now
That was then. Now things are better. Now I can go to several web sites throughout the day without having to update anything. My equipment is better for one thing. Plus the technology used on the web is more stable. Another reason is that a greater number of developers are now doing it right. They avoid forcing user requirements in the first place. Yet the problem continues to crop up at times. I don’t want this to sound like a rant, but there are still sites out there that post a list of requirements. In fact, some new sites are being produced this way.
But Still
A couple of weeks ago I was visiting NetFlix and decided to play a movie trailer before adding it to my movies rental queue. Wrong! I use Firefox as my default browser so when I tried to play the trailer I got a notification that I needed Internet Explorer (IE) to do this. Why in the %$#@&! do I need IE to view a trailer?! I have a modern browser with Flash and JavaScript, so why the demand for IE? That’s nuts. I can view all sorts of video media on the web. Why does this site have a “requirement” that I must conform to?
The answer, technically speaking, is that they’re using Microsoft’s digital rights management — a current-version Windows and IE specific method. It requires Windows XP Service Pack 2 or higher and IE 6 or higher with Windows Media Player 10 or higher. Obviously it’s not a very accessible content delivery system.
And More
A few hours pass… I go to another site — one belonging to a competitor of my company — upon hearing the news they’ve redesigned it. Their old site was really awful which pleased me since they’re a competitor, so I was quite curious to see what they had now. I was hoping they had done visual upgrades without really addressing their old site’s other issues. My wish was granted. When I landed on their new home page, their splash page, I was greeted by a requirements notification:
“To view this site you must have Firefox or Internet Explorer, and you must have the Flash plugin.” — Them
Well, at least Firefox is included. But in reality, the requirements list should have been much longer.
To use the site one must also have JavaScript enabled, and styles and images must be supported. The site was inaccessible to text browsers, keyboard support wasn’t enhanced, and blind users and indexing spiders weren’t accommodated either. Because they’re a competitor I was actually pleased by this last bit, but it did contribute to my writing this article.
Usability and accessibly must be passive to be truly successful. No requirements, no rules, no instructions. Just as I really wanted in the ‘90s, when I go to a site I want to be able to access the content right away. Nothing less, nothing more. I haven’t changed my feelings about this in the past decade and I doubt I ever will. The web has changed for the better, but after the two experiences described above, I realized that it is still immature.
What’s Next?
In time, more people will start getting the idea. I have absolutely nothing against Flash, JavaScript, style sheets, images, or any of it (not even the up-and-coming Silverlight which is indicative of what I mean since I currently don’t have it installed and cannot access their presentation). Just don’t make it a requirement. In other words, feel free to offer things like Flash content, just don’t make it mandatory for content delivery — unless you’re a competitor, in which case I have to recommend the following robots.txt entry:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
Note: Adding that above to a robots.txt file would tell search engine spiders to bypass the entire domain so of course I recommend this in jest only. Don’t try this at home kids.
sam h responds:
Posted: June 25th, 2007 at 7:41 am →
I agree completely. I’m not very advanced when it comes to my knowledge regarding accessibility (although I am working on that), but some of the things mentioned are sort of no-brainers in terms of what not to do on the web today. It’s quite shocking that people are still creating sites like these.
Do you think the developers of these sorts of sites are oblivious to what’s going on around them or do they just want to carry on like they did “in the good ol’ days” and not have to put effort into learning new things?
If it’s the latter then I believe they should hang up their boots and find another profession. There are always new things to learn and taking time out to do so is a necessity in this industry.
There is still hope that these developers may read posts like this and start to see the error of their ways.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: June 25th, 2007 at 8:17 am →
@sam h
In some cases I think it’s ignorance. In which case an article like this might make those folks think. In the case of NetFlix, I have a hard time believing they’re ignorant to it (if they are that would blow me away). Rather, I think for them it’s a numbers game. The number of visitors that use IE is X% and X% is good enough for us, acceptable market penetration, etc. For big players it must be a numbers game.
Jermayn Parker responds:
Posted: June 25th, 2007 at 10:18 pm →
Totally agree, I do part time designing and content management for a government organisation and recently I raised the possibility of using the new Safari for Windows to check our new website that is almost about to be released. The manager and also other IT guys slammed the idea down and said “who uses a Mac?”, “surely not enough to do testing on”
Martijn responds:
Posted: July 1st, 2007 at 6:32 pm →
hi, nice rant.
Jojo Esposa responds:
Posted: July 5th, 2007 at 1:25 pm →
Well, I miss those good old days when I see at the bottom of a page saying,
but I hope to never find it again on current websites.
Jeffrey Zeldman Presents : My Ding-a-Links responds:
Posted: July 12th, 2007 at 10:32 am →
[…] Requirements? That’s Sooo ’90s […]
adriand responds:
Posted: July 12th, 2007 at 8:51 pm →
He has a point. Even though I’m an avid Safari user, I can’t claim to test out all Windows browsers out there. I think it’s really up to the Safari developers to remain consistent with standards and the way Firefox behaves, which they generally do with excellence.
At least now there is more choice. If website X says you don’t have the requirements to watch their movie, that’s okay, you can still source out the clip on youtube and remember not to visit website X next time.
Stefan responds:
Posted: July 13th, 2007 at 3:54 am →
Accessibility is most likely a cost-thing. Also it’s a thing about fear. Fear of presenting a crappy website to your visitors. So, what’s the best way to get a cost-effective, great-looking, compliant website? Well, it’s about the restriction. What if you develop it ie-only and restrict your website ie-only? That would lead to best results.
I can understand the way people think like this. Most likely, because it might really be cost-effective some times. What if your safari and mozilla users won’t provide you any return on your investment? would you develop for them? Why? Because we want to create a community for all? No. The world wide web is like every other business.
Mike K responds:
Posted: July 13th, 2007 at 7:05 am →
My company usually sticks to the idea to test browsers which account for, at minimal, 2% of traffic. For some sites, that will include Safari, but usually it’s IE 6/7 and Firefox hanging onto about 3%.
steve responds:
Posted: July 16th, 2007 at 10:18 am →
Erm, obvious nitpick, but if you build a “compliant” site for IE-only, it probably won’t be “great-looking” (or vice versa, depending on how you look at it.)
Bill W. responds:
Posted: July 16th, 2007 at 2:07 pm →
It’s amazing when you hear about people not supporting browsers because they think that not enough people use each one. Those people never quite understand the “Long Tail” — which is really essential when it comes to the Internet. If you understant the “Long Tail” then you know how important it is to harness the power of the vast amounts of unpopular and obscure targets.
IE and Firefox may have a dominant percentage of market share, but when you lump all of the obscure browsers out there into a single percentage, it often ends up being a fairly significant number of people. It shouldn’t be about trying to support 3, 4 or 5 different browsers. It should be about supporting all browsers through open standards.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: July 16th, 2007 at 2:48 pm →
For those who don’t know, here is a Wikipedia explanation of the term originally coined by Chris Anderson. Thanks Bill.
Smarmy responds:
Posted: July 23rd, 2007 at 5:07 pm →
Errr, big fat deal. Javascript, styles, and images? Money in the bank says that less than 1 percent of your website visitors don’t have these web browsing basics covered. Standards are essential, but you’re nitpicking accessibility. And it’s just not that big of a deal.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: July 23rd, 2007 at 5:53 pm →
In the case of images being required, Smarmy, I meant that it was non-indexable content. Thus search engine spiders would not have access to that content either. If search engines are now part of the 1% is it a big deal now?
Regarding JavaScript, I do believe there are corporate environments where workstation web browsers are fully equipped but incoming JavaScript is filtered out. That why reliance on the
noscriptelement might not always prove to be a graceful degradation or good backup. Tommy could provide more info about this one.I’ve owned a business for 15 years and I wouldn’t dream of giving up 1% of my potential/existing customers if I could possibly help it. And if the reason was an inaccessible web site I’d really be kicking myself since it’s avoidable. Many business challenges are not avoidable so I think it’s good business to act of those you can do something about.
Joe Dolson responds:
Posted: July 23rd, 2007 at 7:42 pm →
Yes, we are nitpicking. This is an accessibility showcase; and we intend, explicitly, to be very picky. The whole subject of this site is to advocate for the best possible practice in web development.
Giving up 1% is, perhaps, a tiny percentage. But if you’re giving up that percentage of your visitors, you’re not going to even qualify to be reviewed on this website. We care about that 1%, no matter how much they may not be a “big deal” to some.
Mel Pedley responds:
Posted: July 24th, 2007 at 5:06 am →
Where does that 1% figure come from?
Statistics from W3 Schools and The Counter.com show between 4% and 11% users have javascript disabled. To put those figures into context, if we were discussing cross-browser performance, that’s a larger user-base than all of the Safari and Opera users combined. So if you are prepared to design with those users in mind, why not the larger group who do not have javascript enabled? There aren’t many sites that can really afford to ignore such a large group.
aljuk responds:
Posted: July 27th, 2007 at 5:56 am →
Aside from the fact that it’s a legal requirement for any business? And I’m quite sure that anyone with a visual impairment would disagree.
And as for building compliant sites for IE-only, surely that’s an oxymoron (given that IE is non-compliant)?