It's All About Your Audience

I've been pretty quiet lately about WaSP's Browser Upgrade Initiative. I am a huge fan of the WaSP's efforts and think they are doing a lot of good for the standards community, but I do feel they are a bit misguided on this particular issue. Let me explain.

All web sites, for the most part, are designed as a vehicle and/or container for information. Whether that information is text-based or graphics-based doesn't matter all that much. It's the information that matters and the technologies used to deliver it. In this sense, the technologies that have become standard for such delivery are a web browser that supports HTML 3.0 and the display of graphics in the JPEG and GIF format. This has become what's known as the lowest common denominator for delivering information on the Internet. Some enterprising companies have created some pretty interesting client-side technologies that also can be used to deliver such information, but there are numerous barriers of entry for these technologies, which sometimes create usability and pervasive accessibility problems.

When you think about the goals of a web site, the number one thing to think about is the site's audience. Who are they? What are their goals? Are they coming to your site for information or entertainment or both? Do the technologies you've chosen fulfill all of the goals of your audience? Do you faithfully know what browsers and operating system environments they are using? Don't base your technology decisions on statistics; they are often wrong. Base them on your own site logs. Are your technology decisions shutting out even a small portion of your audience? Does this matter to you? More importantly, does this matter to your client?

The problem I have with the WaSP's browser upgrade campaign is that they are mistakenly directing it at the designers and developers of web sites, not the end users. Most designers are going to welcome the initiative because it will ultimately make their jobs and lives easier. Most end users are going to not support it since it requires them to upgrade their browser, resulting in a night of insanity waiting for the bloated 5.x and 6.x browsers to download over their slow modem connections (not everyone has broadband yet). A large majority of end users might not even know how to upgrade their browser. Entire computer labs in thousands of colleges and universities will also need to be upgraded. If the 4.x browser works acceptably in these computing environments, then why force an upgrade? So that designers can more easily bloat their sites with fancy DHTML menus, advertisements that fly around the browser screen, and those awful cursor tails that obscure content and information on the site your end user is trying to read? I hope not.

Please don't misunderstand me. I think the advanced technologies found in the 5.x and 6.x browsers are wonderful things indeed. The advent and inclusion of these technologies makes the world of building web applications much easier. However, I don't think the Internet is ready to give up the 4.x browsers just yet. It's entirely possibly to build dynamic web applications that take advantage of the more advanced technologies but also degrade nicely for the 4.x users. It mostly depends on how lazy your designers and developers are, because there are many CSS and Javascript quirks to get around with the 4.x browser set. To simply exclude a portion of your audience because of the browser and/or operating system choice only enforces the logic used by companies that are building proprietary technologies into their browsers and plug-ins.

It all boils down to who your audience is. If you have control over the browser and operating system environments of your audience (intranets, kiosk networks, etc.), then go ahead and build your sites and web applications using whatever technologies you want. However, please don't ignore your audience. They are the ones who will make your site a success, not the technologies you chose to use.

For example, the company I work for is currently building a suite of web applications that use server-side processing to parse out pages in HTML. Many of my team members wanted to be able to use Javascript and DHTML to enhance the user interface and interactivity of the web apps. I strongly objected because I understood completely that our audience for these tools were primarily developers and programmers using a variety of Linux builds, most of which were still using Netscape 4.x as their primary or only browser. I looked at our own site statistics and realized that we absolutely had to include the 4.x browser set in the requirements for our web applications. Due to the poor implementation of such technologies like CSS in Netscape 4.x, we also had to come up with an alternative way separate style from content. We chose to rely on the deprecated FONT tag, but to populate the values using a control file, effectively replacing much of the client-side CSS capability with a server-side solution. We also realized that we couldn't use the positioning capabilities of CSS (because of Netscape 4.x), and decided that using HTML tables was more pervasive for our audience.

You can see now that it's not about the technologies themselves, it's how you use them. This applies to the technologies in the 5.x and 6.x browsers, as well as plug-in technologies like Flash. Carefully evaluate your audience and the technologies available to them, and make your decisions based on that information. Don't simply choose to use a technology because it makes your job easier or because it makes your design better and flashier. Think about how widespread your audience is. Do you have users in Europe? Does your site require a broadband connection? Who are you really designing for? The client or the client's audience. I really hope it's the latter, or you're only going to run into problems when your client forwards you all the email from irate users who can't access the site you build.

Your job as a web designer is to build web sites that deliver information in the best way possible, based on a set of requirements you create by evaluating who the site's audience is. Your job is not to impress your peers with your Flash skills and DHTML skills. Both of these technologies tend to interfere heavily with the accessibility of web sites, and should be avoided if your site is information-based. It's an entirely different set of requirements and functionality to consider if your site requires broadband access or is a showcase of presentation-based materials.

When building the next version of your site, please choose your technologies wisely. Ignoring the 4.x browser set may well lose you a good percentage of your audience. Choosing to use a plug-in technology as your site foundation may also not bode well. The Internet is a big place. Your site is not the only place where people can go to get the information they seek. Only use a certain technology when it is the best choice for delivering that content, not the easiest.

Feedback welcomed.