I’ve loved stuff on the internet for quite a while. having had a variety of presence back for 14/15 years.When I started using Netscape I remember being able to do “about:jwz” and find all sorts of interesting things.

I like clever people; I look bemused at the stuff Paul Downey (@psd) does - and loved The URI Is The Thing and The Web is Agreement. He has a bee in his bonnet about Flash (OK, he has other bees) and style over content
http://twitter.com/psd/status/1423351123, http://twitter.com/psd/statuses/2789711537, http://twitter.com/psd/statuses/1020834328

You don’t need stuff to be unreadable to be attractive.One of Paul’s erstwhile colleagues, Phil Hawksworth, (@philhawksworth), is a passionate advocate ofUnobtrusive Javascript and Progressive Enhancement  - and made an explanatory site about this. You can see the site at unobtrusify.com, and read how unobtrusify works.

So, you can make stuff look good and read properly.So, why the link to jamie Zawinski (@jwz)? Because the problem’s been there forever.

Back in 2001 Jamie put up a post about Design; some of the stuff in there has dated, a little - time has moved on since 2001. Having said that, some quotes give you a flavour.

“Now, there’s nothing wrong with trying to make your web pages look good to the largest number of people. But it’s a matter of priorities: if you place a higher value on the layout than on the meaning, then you don’t value your words very highly.” “More often, you see sites whose top-level page is entirely devoid of text and hyperlinks. It’s usually black, and usually has some kind of time-wasting animation going on. These days, more often than not, a huge Flash file with a spinning logo.”

“If the site uses all the latest crap, then it means that whoever’s site it is is more concerned with appearance than content, and the only reason for that would be that their content is crap. If they had worthwhile content, they wouldn’t have to dress it up in gaudy trappings to get people to think that there’s something there.”

If all these clever people recognise the problems - why don’t some web designers, and the companies they work for?

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