MORE ON FORM, SUBSTANCE AND THE LAYOUT OF THIS SITE

From: Robert Trujillo

Date: 16 Jan 2006

I just read you exchange, On Form, Substance and the Layout of this Site. I cannot believe anyone is complaining about the layout of your site. It boggles the mind. Why? Simply put - have you seen the other websites out there!!!!! For example, I cannot stand ESPN's web site. It is too busy, too cluttered, and has too much FLASH (macromedia). When it comes to sports news, I go to USATODAY - their site is much more manageable.

Simplicity is the key. Who the heck cares about color schemes. As long as you can read the material. The only people who care about web design are web designers. I am a web DEVELOPER by trade. I care more about functionality, than form. I care that people can get to what they want, rather than putting cute, dancing bears on the page.

Trust me, none cares, period!

From: Fabian Pascal

You're preaching to the choir.

Sure. But as tried to explain, there are lots who focus their complaints on form because they're incapable of digesting and appreciating the content. And instead of recognizing it and educate themselves (which their intellect can't handle), they simply dismiss the site as "ugly" or some such.

From: Bob Badour (on Dizwell site)

To: Dizwell

While I don’t find Fabian’s site particularly pretty, I do find it quite usable. I note that (without resorting to any sort of search engine optimization) Fabian’s content managed to get 6 votes from the voter of first resort these days: Google.

While I am sure Dizwell is a wonderful site, I note that Google gives it a page rank of only 5. Prettifying a site doesn’t necessarily get a larger audience.

Granted, Fabian’s content deserves a page rank of at least 8, but an aesthetic facelift won’t affect that at all.

Posted 3/17/06