Someone made a post to a list to which I subscribe today, which ended with a statement like "RFC's, in my opinion, are made to be broken when it comes to usability", a statement I disagree with vehemently.


Short Answer: It's exactly that line of thinking that put us in our current situation where websites have to be designed twice, once for Internet Explorer, and once for everything else.


Long Answer: The problem with throwing standards away for the sake of usability is that you are throwing away common documentation for the sake of your view of what usability is, in your circumstance. This probably works okay when you are developing for a very limited audience, and your end product isn't required to interact with anything else. Take the current (English) keyboard layout for example, a common standard to which you are likely well aware if you are reading this. It works because it's a standard, you can use computers at home, at work, at the library, wherever, and they will give you a reasonably similar interface.


If Martians landed tomorrow, and we stuck them in a small camp to teach them how to type (so they could imbue us with the knowledge of the stars), we might give them special customized keyboards. Probably ones shaped a little differently to suit there hands, possibly with an optimized layout for speed (or even optimized for the type of messages we expect them to write), etc. Limited Audience, minimal interaction, it might work. However, after a while, the Martians get tired with their little camp, blow up the gate with their ray guns and explore the real world. After a time they come to a computer, and want to send an email back to Aunt Mae who stayed back at the camp, they're screwed. The keyboards are completely different: differently shaped, different size, different key configuration. The Martians get pissed off (not able to use these strange keyboards) and use their ray guns to blow up the city and everyone in it. That city could have been saved if we has just followed standards and given them regular keyboards.


Follow Standards, Save Lives.

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Hi, I’m Paul Reinheimer, a developer working on the web.

I co-founded WonderProxy which provides access to over 200 proxies around the world to enable testing of geoip sensitive applications. We've since expanded to offer more granular tooling through Where's it Up

My hobbies are cycling, photography, travel, and engaging Allison Moore in intelligent discourse. I frequently write about PHP and other related technologies.

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