The Silence is Deafening

It’s just occurred to me that since the redesign of Fast Company (April) and Inc.com (July), we’ve received zero complaints from Netscape 4.x users (or any other non-standards-compliant browser user). This could mean several things:

• They like reading the un-styled version of the sites.
• After being startled and disgusted by the undesign of it all, they can’t be bothered to find a feedback link.
• There are very few users of Netscape 4.x that come to Inc. and Fast Company, and of those, none are the type to send feedback.
• They hate it, yet don’t care to tell us.

Now, I’d like to think it’s the top reason :). Regardless of why, I’m extremely happy that we’ve received not even one email scourning the move to standards-based design. It’s brings a sense of relief and reinforces the reasons to build web sites this way — showing that there are real world benefits that are being proved everyday.

The way I like to view it is that using web standards is not a religion whereby there is one golden set of “rules” to live and die by. They are guidelines to building better, more accessible sites — and the sooner that companies start understanding that by using even some of these methods, business can be improved and information can be more widely be distributed, the better.

I am also excited that I used the word “whereby” in a sentence.