Assignment ll: CSS Boogaloo

No, USE-ability. It's about giving people the means to effectively use and access the information that makes up a site. Regardless of the tools a visitor may use to access a site, the content needs to be available in some fashion. This may mean doing things like making multiple versions of the same site (IE optimized, mobile optimized, etc) or providing additional metadata that explains what things on the page are or do.

Horton and Lynch explain that designers can take a user-centered approach in designing our site in order to maximize usability or reach universal usability. As designers work on documents, they need to consider how a wide range of users may feel about a site or how the site performs for them. When working on a user-centered design for a site, the principles noted on pages 54 and 55 of Web Style Guide should be considered. These principles (from The Center for Universal Design at NC State's College of Design) include equitable use, flexibility in use, simple and intuitive use, and perceptible information. Although users will have some core knowledge and do some amount of work to browse a document, the aim is to create documents that people don't have to think about or workaround when browsing.

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What does that even mean? Regardless, that's a rather flippant attitude to take toward usability, but it is important. Applying these principles will accommodate the largest number of users. One of the big appeals of the Web and Internet in general is that it is a space where everyone can readily access and produce information for everyone else to share. It is easy to avoid coding for older versions of IE, ignore marginal browsers like Opera, or focus only on the most common web users; however, limiting who can effectively use your site not only limits your audience, but also limits your argument's ethos.

Scenario Time! If you're making a site explaining that you're a great designer yet you've completely abandoned an IE compatible version of your site, knowledgeable hiring managers or other designers may immediately disregard any argument you've made. Additionally, the people looking at your site from a corporate environment (available browsers might limited to IE6) may be presented with a jumbled mess. Who knows maybe your potential boss uses special tools to browse the web. If he or she can't access your site's content, you may have lost a job. Just because it works for you doesn't mean it works for your visitors. Pay attention to usability so everyone can enjoy.

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