Okay, here's the hell:
(1) ClearType looks blurry. It's nowhere *near* as good as whatever Apple OSX is using, which looks *amazing.* (2) I usually keep it turned off. (3) I've been looking at my sites over at friends' homes and realize they have CT on (it's on by default). Lots of problems with the text (CT doesn't like Century Gothic below 10pt or so, makes Georgia look fat and clumsy, etc.) So, (4) I turned CT on at home. Oh, the horror. Been fixing pages to look better with CT on because (5) I could add a disclaimer asking people to turn CT off, but (6) church folk really aren’t going to do that. It's enough to just get 'em to their own website--anything technical (like getting them to add the site to their Trusted Site List) just ain't gonna happen. Like McCain, most black pastors aren't terribly computer literate.
I feel like the tail wagging the dog, here: I *have* to design for IE. 97% of my users are on it, which means most of them have CT turned on, so I have to design for CT. Sure, I could post a link to M$'s CT "tuner," which, I hear, works only so-so, but, again, anything past turning their PC on and selecting the website from their bookmarks just ain't gonna happen with this crowd.
I get what M$ is doing--trying to improve their GUI to keep up with Steve Jobs. But this ClearType is just awful. Gives me a headache just looking at it. And, because most of my users are simply computer illiterate, they just go with whatever the default settings are. But CT seems, to me, like a product that was rolled out too soon (though, I am told, it's now eight years old. Eight years?! And this is the best they can do?!)
I've also heard M$ has released fonts that will work best with CT, but I can't embed them because they are not licensing them. And, once more, my users ain't installin' no stinkin' fonts.
Hell, I tell you. Curse you, Gates...
7 Comments
OS X's graphics engine is based on Adobe's PDF tech.
scrawled by Scavenger | September 13, 2008 7:57 PM
:(
scrawled by Blaine | September 13, 2008 8:32 PM
Not quite sure how to reply to this, mainly due to my own lack of expertise here. I know just enough to slowly polish up my own site on occasion, and I am dreading the day I finally break down and try to renovate it from the virtual ground up again. While not impossible by any means, it wasn't fun on the first couple of occasions. Also, due to my ISP's Terms of Service, there's certain standard tricks available elsewhere that are not available to me...
scrawled by Dwight Williams | September 13, 2008 8:42 PM
Tell your congregation to get imacs? If you want to stop designing for IE, thats probably the best way to go about it.
I moved my mom to macs years ago, and the tech support is much easier.
scrawled by Jeff | September 13, 2008 8:56 PM
It's not my congregation per se, Jeff. I'm talking about 6-10k unique visitors from across the US and internationally. In broad strokes demographics, black church folk tend to be middle-lower class and not terribly computer savvy. I do a fair amount of education locally, enough to get a sense that, for a lot of these people, there's the same disconnect one finds in working with adult literacy, a pride thing that forces many of these folks to pretend they know, for instance, what a website is, when they really don't.
At a meeting at a local church recently, I was attacked by a sister who complained that her church's website was not user-friendly. Without giving specifics, she said the site was confusing and difficult to navigate, to which several others in attendance chimed in, nodding their heads and murmuring in agreement.
When pressed to explain, specifically, in what way the site was confusing, she said it had been awhile since she'd been there because she'd only gone there once, got confused, and never went back. "If I couldn't find my way around," she concluded, "how would a visitor--an outsider who's never been to the church, find his way around the site?" Murmurs and applause. I felt like I was at a Palin=-McCain rally. I mean, just because you don't know how to navigate a website, how does that mean outsiders will be likewise lost? It was tortured logic. "I command the Alaska national guard! I protect us from Russia!"
Then a second sister spoke up, "I consider myself fairly well acquainted with computers," she said, "and I logged onto the site and it didn’t do anything. Just sat there with a black screen. I kept the site open all day just to make sure, and nothing happened. It just sat there with a black screen." Murmurs of agreement.
So I put on my best Daniel J. Travanti Sad Puppy face. "Sister," I asked, "about this black screen."
"Yes?"
"Did you *read* the writing on the black screen?"
Pause. "There was writing?"
I pulled the site up on a laptop. Black screen. Church logo against a black screen. CLICK HERE TO VIEW FLASH INTRO and beneath that CLICK HERE TO SKIP INTRO.
Then I returned to Sister Number One.
"Sister... Is your PC beige?" By which I meant, is she using Windows XP or Windows 98 or, shudder, Windows 95. I was trying to figure out if she was using IE 7, 6, 5 or, shudder, earlier versions.
She couldn’t remember what color her PC was.
Daniel J. Travanti Face. "When's the last time you were on the site. I mean, roughly--what *year*?"
When I gently pressed her, she finally admitted she hadn't ever been to the website. She doesn't know much abut computers, doesn’t now how to navigate ANY website.
When people are embarrassed to admit something, they just kind of go on the attack. They toss a rope around you and drag you behind their pickup truck, demoralizing you and discounting months of very hard work because they're too embarrassed to admit they can't navigate a web site that has a straightforward list of links in letters the size of your head. I mean it, chimpanzees can navigate that site. The only way to make their website more user friendly would be for me to drive over their house and operate it for them. And even then they'd find something to complain about.
This is the life of a web designer.
I'd been working for them four years and most of them had never even seen their own site and were too embarrassed to admit it. So they attacked me, en masse, at this meeting.
These people are not getting Macs.
scrawled by priest | September 14, 2008 12:32 AM
These people are not getting Macs.
Too bad, it sounds like these are exactly the type of people who should be getting Macs.
scrawled by Herb | September 18, 2008 4:50 PM
Okay, recently I wanted to implement PayPal on a site. First I had to explain what PayPal was, and why it's a good thing for a church site to have. Then I have to explain how a website works and what the internet is and why the church should be there. Most church elders have only but so much RAM in their heads for this sort of thing; it becomes a very involved process of explaining things that are fairly common outside of the church, but every step forward requires a lengthy explanation. Peoples' eyes glaze over and I'm routinely dismissed as a nut.
These people aren't getting Macs.
Also, and I say this as a former rabid Mac addict, once upon a time Macs were simpler to use and more user friendly than PCs. Today I'm not sure that's still true. I mean, I really like Macs, but there'd be a serious learning curve for *me*, a guy who is fairly computer literate.
And I still I haven't warmed up to Safari, which I have installed on my PC. It won't or can't read Webdings fonts, and I'd have to go back to school to learn how to code for it. 97% of my site visitors arrive on IE, another point or two use FireFox or Opera. Safari is less than 1%. And since the pay is low to nonexistent, I have no motive whatsoever to learn how to code to standard.
I like FireFox but got tired of trying to implement WMP and QT on it. And if I'm tired of jiggling with it, I know my folks aren't going to bother.
What do we know abut this new Google browser?
scrawled by priest | September 18, 2008 9:20 PM