Publishers of technology books, eBooks, and videos for creative people

Home > Articles

This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

Confusing Sites, Bewildering Labels

Behold the CSS2 specification as presented by the W3C [3.11]. CSS2 is a powerful standard presentation language created to facilitate the needs of designers, but you wouldn't know it from gazing at this page. It's about as uninspiring a presentation as you've seen since your Uncle Carl showed you the personal site he threw together one afternoon using Microsoft FrontPage and a $50 image editor.

03fig11.gif

none 3.11 The CSS 2 specification per W3C (www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/): An inspiring presentation language whose presentation here is anything but.

Ignoring a gnawing feeling of dread, you attempt to read and comprehend the spec in spite of its unappealing appearance. After all, the W3C is made up of scientists, not graphic designers. All that matters are the words, right? Twenty minutes into your reading experience, cross-eyed and weeping, you surf to an online computer store and buy Macromedia Flash.

To be fair, not only is the W3C not in the business of graphic design, usability consulting, or information architecture, but it's also not in the business of writing designer-friendly tutorials. The W3C site is a series of accurate technical documents created by leading thinkers and expert technologists—and that's all it was ever supposed to be.

In "How to Read W3C Specs" (www.alistapart.com/stories/readspec/), O'Reilly author and WaSP steering committee member (and one of this book's technical editors) J. David Eisenberg explains it this way: "When you seek answers, you're looking for a user manual or user reference guide; you want to use the technology. That's not the purpose of a W3C specification. The purpose of a 'spec' is to tell programmers who will implement the technology, what features it must have, and how they are to be implemented. It's the difference between the owner's manual for your car and the repair manuals."

By definition, the W3C speaks to engineers, not the public. It's not trying to explain or sell the standards it creates. As noted earlier, it doesn't even call them "standards," although that's what they are. (Actually, in recent press materials and on parts of the W3C site, the Consortium has begun using the "s" word instead of the more passive "recommendations." This is a good thing.)

Unlike a corporation, the W3C is not reimbursed for its efforts when you use a web standard, and it discourages its member companies from patenting (http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-patent-policy-20021114/) or charging royalties for web standards or components thereof.

Academics Versus Economics

Detached from the dog-eat-dog, dog-buys-other-dog's-company-only-to-put-it-out-of-business world, the W3C inhabits a contemplative space where it can focus on the web's potential instead of its competitive pressures. W3C activities are of geeks, by geeks, and for geeks, and its site reflects the group's emphasis on science over style or consumer-friendly ease of use.

The trouble is, designers, developers, and site owners care greatly about style and care even more about consumer-friendly ease of use. On their own sites, they would never intentionally publish difficult, arcane text that confuses readers; never willfully stick their most important content in out-of-the-way places; and never deliberately present their content in an unaesthetic, non-branded setting that encourages visitors to click the Back button.

Psychologically, people who care about branding, aesthetics, clarity, and ease of use and who spend their day struggling to bring these attributes to their own web projects are unlikely to believe that an amateurish-looking site filled with arcane technical documents holds the key to their future. So what do these people trust? They trust slick presentations from corporate giants.

Consortia Suggest, Companies Sell

In the West, when we face a business or creative problem, we tackle it by opening a software application, and we look to market-leading corporations to deliver the products we need. Site owners check the health of their business by opening Microsoft Excel-formatted spreadsheets. Designers create logos in Adobe Illustrator and animations in Macromedia Flash, and they prepare images and web layouts in Adobe Photoshop. For every problem, there's a software category, for every category, a leader.

Although pioneering web designers and developers learned to create pages in Notepad and SimpleText, many who came later relied on visual editing products (WYSIWYG tools) to handle their authoring chores. As proprietary scripting languages and incompatible Object Models made development ever more complex, products like Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe GoLive helped many pros create sites that worked while hiding the underlying complexities. How would you support multiple browsers? Push the right button, and the software would do it for you.

These category-leading visual editors were sophisticated and powerful. But until recently, the code and markup they generated had little to do with web standards. Like developers, Dreamweaver and GoLive wrote browser-specific scripts and nonsemantic markup structures.

Dreamweaver MX and GoLive 6 are far more compliant than previous versions (see "Web Standards and Authoring Tools" in Chapter 4), although they still require developer knowledge. And where do their users turn for knowledge? They turn to the attractive, well-written product sites that serve as online user manuals and foster the development of Dreamweaver and GoLive communities. We'll have more to say about such sites in just a moment.

Product Awareness Versus Standards Awareness

As companies were striving to deliver "push-button easy" solutions to the problems of front-end design, the same thing was happening on the back end and in the middle. Proprietary publishing tools and database products from big brands like IBM, Sun, Lotus, and Microsoft and tough little companies such as Allaire (now part of Macromedia) offered needed functionality at a time when standards like XML and the DOM were still being hammered out in committee.

You don't build your car from scratch. Why build your website that way? Sign here, buy now, and if anything doesn't work, we'll fix it in the next upgrade. To deadline-driven developers, the pitch made sense, for the same reason it had once made sense to treat HTML as a design tool: namely, meeting client needs right now.

Thus, product awareness rather than standards awareness dominated the thinking of many web developers and especially of many web designers. For every designer or developer who checked out W3C specs, there were 10 who got their information from the websites of Netscape, Microsoft, Macromedia [3.12], Adobe [3.13], and other major (and smart) companies.

03fig12.gif

none 3.12 Like the W3C, Macromedia creates invaluable tools for designers and developers (www.macromedia.com). MacromediawebsitesMacromediaUnlike the W3C, Macromedia sells these tools and works hard to foster engagement with the design community and to speak that community's language on its website.

03fig13.gif

none 3.13 Like its rival Macromedia, Adobe (www.adobe.com) continually interacts with its users, finding out AdobewebsitesAdobewhat they want most and changing its products accordingly. Also like its rival, Adobe works hard to "speak designers' language" on its website. Contrast this figure with Figures 3.3 and 3.11.

Unlike w3.org, these sites are created to serve consumers (professional designers and developers), to deepen the bond between company and customer, and to enhance the corporate brand. Thus, these sites tend to be well (or at least adequately) designed per corporate branding specs, and their tutorials are written and edited for easy comprehension by a professional audience.

Needless to say, such tutorials emphasize the efficacy of the company's products. When these companies mention web standards, it's likely to be in passing or in connection with claims that their product is more compliant than a competitor's. After all, the goal of such sites is to make you value the product you just bought and be willing to buy next year's upgrade.

In short, many web professionals—designers and developers as well as their clients and employers—know quite a lot about proprietary solutions and quite a bit less about web standards. Nor do many realize, except perhaps tangentially, that aligning themselves exclusively with any single company or product line might lock them into an ever-increasing cycle of expense: from necessary upgrades to costly customization to training, consulting, and beyond. After all, that's simply how business works.

One particular product deserves special mention, and it gets it directly below.

Peachpit Promotional Mailings & Special Offers

I would like to receive exclusive offers and hear about products from Peachpit and its family of brands. I can unsubscribe at any time.

Overview


Pearson Education, Inc., 221 River Street, Hoboken, New Jersey 07030, (Pearson) presents this site to provide information about Peachpit products and services that can be purchased through this site.

This privacy notice provides an overview of our commitment to privacy and describes how we collect, protect, use and share personal information collected through this site. Please note that other Pearson websites and online products and services have their own separate privacy policies.

Collection and Use of Information


To conduct business and deliver products and services, Pearson collects and uses personal information in several ways in connection with this site, including:

Questions and Inquiries

For inquiries and questions, we collect the inquiry or question, together with name, contact details (email address, phone number and mailing address) and any other additional information voluntarily submitted to us through a Contact Us form or an email. We use this information to address the inquiry and respond to the question.

Online Store

For orders and purchases placed through our online store on this site, we collect order details, name, institution name and address (if applicable), email address, phone number, shipping and billing addresses, credit/debit card information, shipping options and any instructions. We use this information to complete transactions, fulfill orders, communicate with individuals placing orders or visiting the online store, and for related purposes.

Surveys

Pearson may offer opportunities to provide feedback or participate in surveys, including surveys evaluating Pearson products, services or sites. Participation is voluntary. Pearson collects information requested in the survey questions and uses the information to evaluate, support, maintain and improve products, services or sites; develop new products and services; conduct educational research; and for other purposes specified in the survey.

Contests and Drawings

Occasionally, we may sponsor a contest or drawing. Participation is optional. Pearson collects name, contact information and other information specified on the entry form for the contest or drawing to conduct the contest or drawing. Pearson may collect additional personal information from the winners of a contest or drawing in order to award the prize and for tax reporting purposes, as required by law.

Newsletters

If you have elected to receive email newsletters or promotional mailings and special offers but want to unsubscribe, simply email ask@peachpit.com.

Service Announcements

On rare occasions it is necessary to send out a strictly service related announcement. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance we might send users an email. Generally, users may not opt-out of these communications, though they can deactivate their account information. However, these communications are not promotional in nature.

Customer Service

We communicate with users on a regular basis to provide requested services and in regard to issues relating to their account we reply via email or phone in accordance with the users' wishes when a user submits their information through our Contact Us form.

Other Collection and Use of Information


Application and System Logs

Pearson automatically collects log data to help ensure the delivery, availability and security of this site. Log data may include technical information about how a user or visitor connected to this site, such as browser type, type of computer/device, operating system, internet service provider and IP address. We use this information for support purposes and to monitor the health of the site, identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents and appropriately scale computing resources.

Web Analytics

Pearson may use third party web trend analytical services, including Google Analytics, to collect visitor information, such as IP addresses, browser types, referring pages, pages visited and time spent on a particular site. While these analytical services collect and report information on an anonymous basis, they may use cookies to gather web trend information. The information gathered may enable Pearson (but not the third party web trend services) to link information with application and system log data. Pearson uses this information for system administration and to identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents, appropriately scale computing resources and otherwise support and deliver this site and its services.

Cookies and Related Technologies

This site uses cookies and similar technologies to personalize content, measure traffic patterns, control security, track use and access of information on this site, and provide interest-based messages and advertising. Users can manage and block the use of cookies through their browser. Disabling or blocking certain cookies may limit the functionality of this site.

Do Not Track

This site currently does not respond to Do Not Track signals.

Security


Pearson uses appropriate physical, administrative and technical security measures to protect personal information from unauthorized access, use and disclosure.

Children


This site is not directed to children under the age of 13.

Marketing


Pearson may send or direct marketing communications to users, provided that

  • Pearson will not use personal information collected or processed as a K-12 school service provider for the purpose of directed or targeted advertising.
  • Such marketing is consistent with applicable law and Pearson's legal obligations.
  • Pearson will not knowingly direct or send marketing communications to an individual who has expressed a preference not to receive marketing.
  • Where required by applicable law, express or implied consent to marketing exists and has not been withdrawn.

Pearson may provide personal information to a third party service provider on a restricted basis to provide marketing solely on behalf of Pearson or an affiliate or customer for whom Pearson is a service provider. Marketing preferences may be changed at any time.

Correcting/Updating Personal Information


If a user's personally identifiable information changes (such as your postal address or email address), we provide a way to correct or update that user's personal data provided to us. This can be done on the Account page. If a user no longer desires our service and desires to delete his or her account, please contact us at customer-service@informit.com and we will process the deletion of a user's account.

Choice/Opt-out


Users can always make an informed choice as to whether they should proceed with certain services offered by Adobe Press. If you choose to remove yourself from our mailing list(s) simply visit the following page and uncheck any communication you no longer want to receive: www.peachpit.com/u.aspx.

Sale of Personal Information


Pearson does not rent or sell personal information in exchange for any payment of money.

While Pearson does not sell personal information, as defined in Nevada law, Nevada residents may email a request for no sale of their personal information to NevadaDesignatedRequest@pearson.com.

Supplemental Privacy Statement for California Residents


California residents should read our Supplemental privacy statement for California residents in conjunction with this Privacy Notice. The Supplemental privacy statement for California residents explains Pearson's commitment to comply with California law and applies to personal information of California residents collected in connection with this site and the Services.

Sharing and Disclosure


Pearson may disclose personal information, as follows:

  • As required by law.
  • With the consent of the individual (or their parent, if the individual is a minor)
  • In response to a subpoena, court order or legal process, to the extent permitted or required by law
  • To protect the security and safety of individuals, data, assets and systems, consistent with applicable law
  • In connection the sale, joint venture or other transfer of some or all of its company or assets, subject to the provisions of this Privacy Notice
  • To investigate or address actual or suspected fraud or other illegal activities
  • To exercise its legal rights, including enforcement of the Terms of Use for this site or another contract
  • To affiliated Pearson companies and other companies and organizations who perform work for Pearson and are obligated to protect the privacy of personal information consistent with this Privacy Notice
  • To a school, organization, company or government agency, where Pearson collects or processes the personal information in a school setting or on behalf of such organization, company or government agency.

Links


This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects Personal Information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this web site.

Requests and Contact


Please contact us about this Privacy Notice or if you have any requests or questions relating to the privacy of your personal information.

Changes to this Privacy Notice


We may revise this Privacy Notice through an updated posting. We will identify the effective date of the revision in the posting. Often, updates are made to provide greater clarity or to comply with changes in regulatory requirements. If the updates involve material changes to the collection, protection, use or disclosure of Personal Information, Pearson will provide notice of the change through a conspicuous notice on this site or other appropriate way. Continued use of the site after the effective date of a posted revision evidences acceptance. Please contact us if you have questions or concerns about the Privacy Notice or any objection to any revisions.

Last Update: November 17, 2020