HTML for fun and profit - a tribute

I have ben going through my bookshelves and throwing out the trash - you know "Mastering Windows 95"  (I never did) and so on.  I came across a book from 1995 by Mary Morris called HTML for fun and profit.  Anyone who was around in the early days of the web will remember this because it was the book about HTML.  The in the sense that it was actually the only book published.   It was and remains a classic albeit a bit out of date now.

Some things never date though because they are universally true.

"For many years WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) has dominated the desktop publishing world.  This ususually means that there is different software for each platform.  The only thing that the Desktop Publishing systems had in common was paper.  HTML was not designed to be a WYSIWYG publishing tool.  It was designed to be a universal document distribution and publishing medium."

 This single paragraph says two important things about the web  that are as true now as they were in 1995:

• It is standards-based.  Whatever software you are using, be it IE6, Lynx, or a Partially sighted person with a screen reader, the information should still be communicated.
• It is not WYSIWYG.  A reader can make the text bigger, have a big screen, a small window or whatever.  The page should still work.

This gives a tremendous challenge to the designer.  How do you design a screen that does its job whatever the browser and whatever sized window the user decides to show it in. This is a challenge that very few designers have even recognised let alone overcome. 

The reaction of most designers on first encounter with the web is horror.  They find ways of trying to eliminate these uncomfortable truths rather than overcome them.

"This site was designed for a 1152x864 pixel screen with at least IE5"
"This site uses frames - please update your browser"
"This site uses Flash - if you do not have the flash reader click here to install" 

In the late 90’s the standard solution was a frameset with the web page in an 600x480 panel in the centre of the screen.  Because the space was so small, the text had to be 6 point.  Those sites were bad bad bad.  Even today, many sites launch themselves in a separate popup window of a fixed size, with no ability to resize. 

I don’t need the instructions on how to install Mosaic on my PC any more, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw my well-thumbed copy of Mary’s book away.  She did a fantastic job.