Re: Introducing the Ulster American Society


"katy" <katysails@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:5pubrjFtb9rbU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Don Moody wrote:
"cecilia" <myths@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4739888d.4689243@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<GenDigger@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Interesting that a statement with such a negative connotation
would be
made... I had no problem reading or navigating the pages...

Uninterested in the material, I was however curious as to Don's
difficulty. I accessed the first page. Fine. I then tried the
link "UAS Launches Free On-line Genealogy Forum" and got an
'Internet
Explorer cannot open the internet site' message. I tried going
Back
to the first page, and had an 'Internet Explorer cannot open the
internet site' message. I refreshed and got an 'Internet Explorer
cannot open the internet site' message. I moved on with my life.

I've just tried again, with the same result.

This time, I tried deleteing cookies (I was surprised how many
there
were from the one site) and temporary internet files. These
deletions
enabled me to see the first page again,

I was using Windows 95, IE 5.5, medium security, which Microsoft
describes as "appropriate for most Internet sites".



The issue,Cecilia, was not with whether I could get the pages
on-screen. If that was it I would have said so. I had no troubled
getting the pages with IE7.

The issue was that the pages once got were unreadable by any
standard test of readability. It is matters of size, colour,
contrast, line length, typeface and so on and so forth. Just
because some useless prat thinks pale tiny type in pastel colours
is pretty it doesn't follow that such trash communicates anything
to anybody else - apart from the fact that the useless artists
hasn't a clue about the design credo that 'form must fit function'.
One of the functions of the pages on the site is to be read. If
they are unreadable the site is generally useless.

I might say this whole pretty-boy arty-farty (americanised) style
is infecting more and more web sites. Commercial people who produce
the unreadable get told that I will not be buying their goods or
services, and why. If top management doesn't give a monkey's cuss
about the utility of what I can see and judge for myself, they sure
as hell don't give a monkey's cuss for the quality and utility of
what I cannot see in the production of the product or service. In
other words by permitting such godawful websites they are showing
they are traders in worthless trash. And I don't mind saying so.

And if Drew McGinty is seriously interested in genealogy she should
be aware that the genealogical community does not consist entirely
of young, non colour-blind people with 20/20 vision and no kind of
visual impairment whatever. Real designers know that the population
contains high percentages of people with assorted visual
impairments, and the incidence of those impairments increases with
age.Real designers developed standards of readability and
legibility precisely so that all potential readers of their
material could actually read it.

Oh, and by the way, you'll never guess the identity of the
designer-printer of technical documentation who sat on the Council
of the Institute of Printing and on numerous Panels which wrote
Standards for documentation and put therein the minimum criteria
for readability. Criteria derived from numerous studies by the
Royal Navy, the Medical Research Council, the Royal College of Art,
and the Typography Department at Reading University and tested in
his own design studio and printworks before being written up.

Don
Good Lord, Don. Maybe you should have your spleen removed. It's
obviously bothering you. I did not go to that site, primarily
because none of my ancestors came from North Ireland, but to
criticize someone because they used something other than Times New
Roman or used some artistic elements to enhance their site? How
petty and small of you. and also the fact that you use an ad hominem
to attack the site (your reference to "americanized"...as if this is
some kind of qualifier, which it is not). Go have a few drinks.
Mellow out. Your cumudgeonliness is showing.

Brilliant. You don't know what you are talking about and you haven't
seen what you are talking about but you think you can criticise
someone who does know and has seen. Are you completely stupid?

Styles become popular and spread from a centre. Most so-call creative
artists create nothing new at all. They merely follow the prevailing
fashion. The fashion in which the site is designed originated in
America and is much used in America. It IS an americanized fashion.

The style was originated and used by people who had lost the plot.
They though they had to produce 'pretties' which were twee and amusing
to marketing folk and such;ole who considered only 'image' and
'impact' and had not a clue about FUNCTION. The function of written
material in any medium is to be read, by the maximum possible number
of the people to whom the contents are addresses. What is not readable
by that number is therefore not functional.

I received another example of this sort of creative style this
morning. It is unreadable. The company concerned has been told in
unmistakable terms to get it sorted forthwith. Why? Because what is
unreadable are the instructions for the use of kidney dialysis
materials. I am collecting the kit, tomorrow, Thursday. Why? Because
I'll be dead within days if I don't start the procedure, and I'll be
dead even faster if I get it wrong. The *American* company concerned
takes the position that its literature must all conform to the
'pretty' style of the marketing folk. Even if such idiocy kills the
patients.

The question is whether you are too dim, even with this example, to
understand the importance of readability.

Don


.

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