About websites
A bit of history
For countless generations, information has been displayed in Static format and all of the concepts of 20th century design grew from that tradition. However, the invention of the computer monitor has liberated information display from the limitations inherent in older Static media and taken the revolutionary step of delivering ultimate control of the final presentation into the hands of the reader.
What are Static and Dynamic displays?
What this means
This presents a whole series of new freedoms - and new challenges - in the presentation of information.
A computer monitor is not a sheet of paper; it is an entirely new medium with fluid adaptability instead of fixed control at its heart. Rather than trying to restrict the new Dynamic display environment through applying the mindset of old-fashioned Static display, we need to break free from those mindsets.
Instead of recoiling in terror from the revolutionary concepts of fluidity, adaptability and the transfer of ultimate control from the designer to the reader as being frightening journeys into uncharted territory, we should see them instead as being the gateway to a new and exciting design universe.
The bottom line
If what you want is to transfer what you see on a sheet of paper to a monitor screen, there are still many old-style Static designers out there who will gladly grab your money and build you a website design which will look exactly the way you want it to look to people using exactly the same setup as you are.
And it will probably deny access to your information to everybody else.
That is the cold, harsh truth about trying to shackle Dynamic display media to old-fashioned Static display concepts.
Has anyone ever said to you, 'I visited your website but it didn't seem to work on my computer'?
Here's a gentle suggestion as to why that might be happening.
On the World Wide Web, "What You See Is What You Get" only exists on your own computer. If you want absolute control over what someone else sees on their computer, make a PDF file. On the WWW, you have no such control.
Whenever they want to, the reader can change the width of their browser, the size of their font, the colours of their screen and fonts - indeed, the font you have specified may not even exist on their computer - they can switch off Javascript, they can refuse to install Flash; they can turn off image-loading, they can override your styling; they may be blind, they may be unable to use a mouse and so navigate with their keyboard; they may have poor eyesight and have to set a large font in order to read it; they may be using an entirely different type of computer and operating system, they may be behind a strictly-configured company firewall which limits them to downloading only straight HTML pages.
All of these mean that your wonderful all-singing, all-dancing, beautiful website design may not be anything like what your visitor will see on their screen.
If your site has been built so that any of these things is essential before the visitor can read the content or navigate the pages, you will simply be preventing many of your visitors/customers/friends from using your site. Many of them will not choose, or will not be able, to change their setup They will simply write you off as an arrogant control-freak and go elsewhere.
And if you are in business, this means buying the product or services from one of your competitors.
Is that really what you want?
Where we stand
Gaelweb is among those vanguard web authoring companies who enthusiastically embrace the exciting challenges of the new Dynamic Display media and who are working to explore the possibilities and opportunities of developing new concepts in information presentation.
Your choice
If what you want is a website which will deny access to your information to many people, you really are wasting your time reading all this!
If what you want is a website which will make your information easily available to every single visitor, without exception, then talk to us. The very least we will be able to do is to introduce you to the real meaning of the first two 'w's in the World Wide Web.