Web 3.0 Rage
Jun. 14th, 2011 01:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
garoteListen, developers: There's a reason we call them web PAGES
Not web dashboards, web schematics, web steering wheels, web control panels, or web nuclear reactor consoles. They are pages. They exist primarily to be read.
Actually, let me attack this problem from a different angle. My fellow web developers, please take the following pop quiz:
Point-and-click is a good interface for which ONE of these activities?
Following a hyperlink
Horseback riding
Baking scones
Playing the kazoo
Welding sheet metal
Colonoscopy
With the power of "Web 3.0" and "Flash" and "clouds" and other buzzwords, you can probably design a website for doing all six. But you wouldn't want to.
So ... Why are you taking a paycheck for it?
I know you're out there. Someone had to design all this garbage. No one would choose to, so there must be money involved. Maybe you're all interns and you don't know any better. Maybe you just don't care. Perhaps you do it because the alternative - as you see it - is waiting tables or cleaning toilets downtown.
There's better work. I swear! You can find it! Do the honorable thing. I know, I know, money is very persuasive ... but perhaps you can resist?
The next time someone from a news agency asks you to write a program that covers an entire web page with a black bar and then loads an HD video stream advertising junk food ... please, just say no. Tell them it insults your religious heritage or something.
Not web dashboards, web schematics, web steering wheels, web control panels, or web nuclear reactor consoles. They are pages. They exist primarily to be read.
Actually, let me attack this problem from a different angle. My fellow web developers, please take the following pop quiz:
Point-and-click is a good interface for which ONE of these activities?
Following a hyperlink
Horseback riding
Baking scones
Playing the kazoo
Welding sheet metal
Colonoscopy
With the power of "Web 3.0" and "Flash" and "clouds" and other buzzwords, you can probably design a website for doing all six. But you wouldn't want to.
So ... Why are you taking a paycheck for it?
I know you're out there. Someone had to design all this garbage. No one would choose to, so there must be money involved. Maybe you're all interns and you don't know any better. Maybe you just don't care. Perhaps you do it because the alternative - as you see it - is waiting tables or cleaning toilets downtown.
There's better work. I swear! You can find it! Do the honorable thing. I know, I know, money is very persuasive ... but perhaps you can resist?
The next time someone from a news agency asks you to write a program that covers an entire web page with a black bar and then loads an HD video stream advertising junk food ... please, just say no. Tell them it insults your religious heritage or something.
