Helping the user to view your site

[David]

I'm just doing a bit of research prior to starting a new website for a client and I came across this superb example of a website that trully cares about acessibility. Check out Richard Murphy Architects (http://www.richardmurphyarchitects.com/) and pay special attention to the "Problems with small screens" link. I can't give you a URL for this because naturally, the site uses frames. But hey, these guys really care about you plebs out there running below 800x600. Isn't their workaround just ingenious?

Should architects really be allowed to design their own websites?

Curiously, this site was reviewed in Building Design this week and the reviewer had this to say about it. "I found this website very informative , lots of good pictures and up-to-date projects, even office vacancies. I liked the split of content into four typological definitions. It was easy to follow and underscored the practice philosophy of contextual design." Strangely he didn't say anything about the structural components of the site - I wonder why.

All I can say is that if this site is representative of their buildings, stand clear!

[francis]

Have you seen Opera's small screen rendering (http://www.opera.com/products/smartphone/smallscreen/)? It is a feature in their latest release - you can instantly view a site in an environment close to how a PDA or similar would view it. Very nice!

[Tom]

See my post re the Glass Wall. My opposition to fixed column widths is hardening. There seems little point in them. The advice from Richard Murphy Architects could be followed by nerds but I can't see many potential clients taking it. Who did they design their website for? Francis' point about Opera and very small screens is interesting.

[James Glasheen]

Does anyone know of existing stats about PDA or Mobiles? Number of users, types of visited sites etc.

[francis]

Having a quick google on PDA browser stats doesn't bring up anything of particular use. I'd guess they would be fairly miniscule. Off the top of my head, I'd guess most PDAs use something like Windows CS, which would probably make IE the browser (although I'm not sure which version of IE that would be - we were offered some "new technology" at work last month with Windows CE bundled with it and that came with IE4! I refused it.). Nokia phones have started using Opera as their browser (http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2003/10/27/). Whether these would get lumped in with IE/Opera in browser stats or get put with "other" is something I don't know.