meaty post, meatier comments

The web continues to be a challenging space - constantly growing and evolving. I find myself, at times, a bit overwhelmed by it all. I can't learn fast enough. I'm not learning the "right" things. Three sites over, their design is that much better than mine. All judgements, it's true. And then I read an article like this, and it all falls together, and I start feeling better about what I'm doing.

State-of-the-art interactivity?

I was recently asked to join a panel that would be judging interactive design created over the last year. The entries had been submitted by agencies and their clients, and represented some of the largest firms and brands in the world.

The judging was hard for me. As I clicked through the hundreds of submissions, I started to get an uneasy feeling. Why was all of this so bad? I mean, it was really bad. Could it be that what I have always believed to be good interaction differs dramatically from what "professionals" believe?

Jeffery continues on to list and describe the trends he finds difficult, which are relieving, to say the least. I have focused my time in the last year on building sites that are standards-compliant and media-flexible, that can be viewed not only on different browsers, but different devices as well. Building on these skills is clearly the path to take.

The comments in this article are also fat with insight.

I think where these reputable firms will fail is in the degradability of their product. As cell phone adoption is nearing an almost worldly saturation point, and other handheld media are gaining critical mass, these candy-coated sites that are designed much like the pre-standards (table markup and proprietary code) days will show for what they truly are: one-dimensional. Clients and DM's will soon begin noticing that their site content, though perfectly rendered in IE and Firefox, can't even be dialed in from a basic cell phone browsing service. When they see that a competitor site can be, many of these firms that produced these hollow designs will be SOL. ... I think that the days of a 'designing merely for the Web' mentality are fast coming to an end. In other words, you shouldn't have to find yourself sifting through so much crap in an 'interactive' Web design contest in the near future (*hopefully*).

But I will admit I have been guilty of the same, and could possibly commit similar crimes in the future ...