USS Clueless              Voyages of a restless mind

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Stardate 20010711.1432 (On Screen): Art is art, but business is business, and sometimes bad art is good business. Everyone's favorite A-lister Jeffrey Zeldman is out there pounding the table for standards compliance again (with his shoe), and he's trying to tell large companies that they should turn away visitors to their sites who are using old non-compliant browsers, for the greater good.

This proposal has been discussed before in numerous forums, but I don't think with regard to commercial sites. There a few good points made here: compact HTML is unquestionably a good thing for a big commercial site, for instance. But the idea of actually turning away potential customers because of their browser choice is ludicrous, and demonstrates a complete disconnect with reality. Standards are valuable when and only when they serve us. A standard is not an end in itself and will not be complied with if the expense is too high. Turning away potential customers is too high a cost.

Successful companies do not create business plans based on ideology. A good business plan is practical and resilient, such as to succeed even in less than ideal conditions. No company survives by telling its customers what to do, or by trying to sell them what they need. All that does is to drive potential customers to your competitor, never to return. Companies which work for the greater good tend to go broke.

Success is gotten by letting them do what they want to do and by selling them what they want to buy. Zeldman needs to study that lesson; he's trying to sell standards compliance, and he's not doing a very good job of it. (discuss)

Update 20010715: Oh, now this is vile. And it appears as a popup.