As an interactive agency we pride ourselves in our ability to keep in the forefront of the latest trends and techniques. We get so wrapped up in keeping up with the techno-Joneses that we often don’t realize that there is a huge line behind us of others struggling to keep up with just the basics of what we take for granted.

FTP
I’d like to assume we’ve all used FTP software before and we all understand how to login and send a file to a remote server, but this isn’t yet the case. In just this year alone I’ve ran into several clients and friends who aren’t familiar with FTP services. I’m sure there are several of you out there who can relate to people trying to send you multiple 10 Mb files via email only to wonder why they are bouncing back. That same person is often likely lost when you go on explaining how to FTP rather then emailing them.

The HOME button
Clicking on the logo takes you back to the homepage, right? No, not according to many we’ve spoken to. Many times either during the initial homepage design or just prior to launching someone always asks “How do you get to the homepage?” Often, I have to be the home-button-Nazi and say “No Home button for you” but is that correct? Certainly it depends on the site, information rich CNN uses the HOME button but product based Amazon uses the logo. Can we get a standard here?

New Browser Windows
OK, this one is a tough one to justify to a client. I for one hate the idea of a site opening new windows unless I asked for it. I’ll CTRL-Click or Apple-T my way to a new window but countless clients demand that we pop open their externally linking content in a new browser window. Their logic is “if someone comes to my site and I offer them links, then they might leave my site”…. yes… exactly! That is what browsing the Web is all about. Can you imagine how awful the browsing experience would become if every click of a URL spawned a new window?

The Web is not Word
Granted, the Web-based WYSIWYG editors have come a long, long way over the years but due to CSS and inherit limitation these editors aren’t as feature rich or flexible as word-processing applications for the desktop. To the chagrin of many designers / developers clients love to use all sorts of colors, fonts and sizes in their copy. This is evident in a short reviewal of all the PowerPoint presentations out there. How do you explain to a client that an online Web-based editor is going to give them what they need to make changes, but there are inevitable some changes which will need to be done by a trained developer?

Sometimes You Have to Scroll
At some point long ago the idea of a scrolling pages of content was seen as the 8th deadly sin. I believe those days are long gone. This concept was replaced by the notion of developing layouts which cater to varying browser / display settings. For instance, you still want to have the important content fit into an 800 x 600 display but even those dimensions are going the way of the Dodo bird. Let’s go back to CNN, here is a site where you aren’t going to see the full content in 800 x 600, you’ll need to be at 1024 x 768 and even then you’ll scroll vertically and that is OK. I don’t subscribe to the notion that people are too lazy to scroll… get real, if they are too lazy to scroll then they are likely to lazy to move a mouse in which case you are marketing to a vegetable.

The bottom-line is we have to do a better job at educating the public, our clients, and our friends. It’s always good to remember that many people aren’t in this industry and many just don’t care about most of the things we designers / developers and programmers are passionate about.

I’ll append this list again in the future but for now I’ll end my rant.