I believe that no unique medium is ever completely wiped out and replaced by another, different, medium. Media are basically tools of communication or art. For instance, people still make sculptures, paintings, newspapers, radio stations, television. Unique innovations (for an example of non-unique, acrylic paints are not terribly different than oil painting, it's not an entirely different discipline) offer unique pros and cons and are therefore more suited to different messages and skill sets. People don't seem to see this. They either think the Web is king or that the Web is just like other mediums.
In my opinion, the following statements are all going to be proven wrong:
Myth: Television and print will be made obsolete by the Web (23 Aug '98 Alertbox: "End of Legacy Media")
I say the Web is different than either and takes some audience and participants from each but also brings new voices and assets to our landscape. TV does not have the exploring, surfing aspect of well linked pages, but it does offer a receptive, mellow experience that is not in your control. The Web offers a wealth of control and information. TV touches needs we have that, for untold centuries in our mutual history, were met in nightly campfire story telling and talk. The Web is a thing liberating us from the limitations of the past. TV (and radio) are like story telling and sitting around the campfire in that they aren't things you do actively with a purpose (the mode of a Web surfer) and to satisfy your every whim immediately. You don't interrupt a person the second you get bored to go somewhere else, and there's a reward in being more passive and actually letting the TV show finish what it was saying, even if you, in a meditative campfire state are not really listening. As Jakob Nielsen points out himself in his 1 Sept '97 Alertbox ("Why Advertising Doesn't Work on the Web"), TV is warm and TV is scheduled. Well, sometimes it's nice to leave things up to someone else and not get anything done at that. Every moment of every day is not spent rushing around getting things done.
The Web is less transportable than the printed page. You need electricity and a connection to use it. Print also offers a more carefully prepared presentation than most Web pages. This is natural because it is harder to change. Print is also more permanent as we know from dead links. Libraries hold magazines from decades ago. And I like used book stores and libraries. Somehow the fact that someone else has touched and used something, and that you can take it home, is nice. I don't like the way paper uses trees and then has to be disposed of in some way, but the net uses electricity, too. And I tend to print pages that I find I want, too (I want to hold them and also I know that they may be dead links in a few months). I don't feel relief at the prospect of printed things going. I suspect they will stay to one degree or another.
Myth: Web pages are under the umbrella of TV commercials, magazine ads,
and brochures. You
use the very same design principles.
To a certain degree, David Siegel is right. He does have many excellent observations/principles in his book (Creating Killer Web Sites). But only in regarding the details, in my opinion. To not use lines to divide things and to use white space positively. To not use blank space too much (for instance, I indent new paragraphs because he makes a good point about that).
But there are larger things that Siegel says that are terrible on the Web in reality. He says you grab the visitor's attention and draw them in. I agree with this only in the sense that the layout and offerings of the page should be very quickly graspable. If it is a site to explore and get lost in, then that is the concept to convey (see superbad.com). But he takes the concept out to the hated splash page. The Web is supposed to have an immediacy, not offering the frustration and gimmickry of a useless extra click. Time wastage!
Siegel also says you keep the user in your site: you keep all outbound links in a separate place, an "exit tunnel." The entire idea and value of the Web is to be connected, to follow what you are interested in as opposed to being lead by someone else like a bull with a nose ring. As Metcalfe's law (via Jakob Nielsen) states, the value of a network increases with connectedness. The idea of shuttling visitors into your cave (or Siegel's restaurant model) that is to be entered via a tunnel and exited via another tunnel, runs counter to what the Internet is: more of a public platform than a restaurant. The idea of an "exit tunnel" in the Web is laughably contrived to me.
If you're talking about something, do link to a page describing it, even if that is not on your site. That's the uniqueness and value of the Web. Anywhere that you can imagine some visitor may like a link is where you should put a link (unless it's too repetitive). Further, if there is something you think visitors may hope to find on your site, and you cannot provide it (say, a forum) or it is provided elsewhere, put a link out to a site that does provide it. That is, to seal your site from outward links (links only available on a segregated page) is to ignore a great value of the Web.
I think a site should present a recognizable look so you know that you are still on the site. I think outbound links should usually show you a full URL somewhere on the page. This tells the visitor that it is an outbound link and gives them a URL should they be working off of a printout. (I tend to print things I find interesting and may look up a link on a different computer than where I found the linking page. People are in cyber cafes, and at work, and then they surf further at home. I find it frustrating to have to go find that linking page when it didn't name the URL for me.)
I think Siegel unwittingly made a self-fulfilling prophesy. By omitting links and setting visitors up for a creator controlled experience, he makes a Web site into something akin to TV commercials, magazine ads, and brochures. He then applies the principles of these forms to the Web and says that's the end of the lesson. Sure, if you take out the unique feature of a medium, you have another medium. Take out the visuals on TV and you have radio and apply the principles of radio to what you want on TV. It doesn't let the real nature of the TV flower. So, too, the Internet will flower when all of it's features are acknowledged, explored, and used.
About Siegel's praise of sweating the details, I'm torn. I like a well made site, but to fuss over the exact placement of an image to the point where you are using tables within tables or the single pixel gif trick, there's line that has to be drawn somewhere. For one thing, how much longer download for each visitor downloading all of these tables or nicely rendered texts in images that could have been just text? And how much of your time is spent on this rather than getting valuable content for the user? Also, I tend to be more information oriented than Siegel, like the framers of the HTML specification: accessibility for all users, whether on a top of the line system or a blind person hearing a page read by Lynx on a slow modem connection. What is the value to people for the time I put in and isn't the placement I got with little trouble good enough (especially since I make pages in my free time)? Yet I agree with him, too: I like great looking, clearly laid out pages.
Myth: The Web is a basically a world wide marketplace
This is part of what Siegel misses. Making money and spending money and selling people on things and being sold on things is not all there is to life. People were non-monetarily connected to other people in the restricted world of personal contact and contact via artists' creations. The Internet opens this up further in newsgroups and forums, personal Web pages, and fan Web sites. (The fan world has wildly benefited from the Internet, and the consumer world has opened up on newsgroups. These people aren't being paid for providing this value.) People who love money (and now I'm talking about many corporations) can only see the world wide, 24/7 aspect of the Web. When they bring in the restrictive, "I'm only linking to my stuff and I'm not talking to you but selling you (visitors are only customers, present an impersonal, unreal, impenetrable view of yourself)," they miss major assets of the Internet. They have not caught the cluetrain. The Internet is a new animal. Like other new animals, such as radio was, it changes how we approach our world and what we expect from businesses and each other, and it changes how well informed we are. I think people will expect forums on business sites, letting people freely talk and share information, even negative information. Relatedly, Jakob Nielsen's usability studies (30 May '99 Alertbox) reveal that visitors already expect to learn more about the people behind the sites.
In summary, I find the Internet is expanding our world view to something
not just more accessible but more human and real. I keep my eyes out
for new helpful things I can do for my visitors. I don't do this full
time, I have a lot to learn, but I try. One thing I find very
annoying is when I email a site creator/maintainer and they don't
email an acknowledgment. That is snobbery and inaccessibility. I think
the Internet will put that attitude out of style, it opens communication up,
doesn't shut it down. (I reply to all email received, except pot-shots,
pure weirdness, and suchlike.)
(Written sometime in 2000 or 2001.)
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