Posted by
Cliff
on from the new-language-on-the-block dept.
martin asks: "Just saw this page on WebML. Looks quite interesting for spec-ing out a Web site and its navigation, how does this compare with the more general UML[?] and WML[?]?"
Re:Vapid Deployment Software Methodologies...
by
DaveHowe
·
· Score: 3
This leads me to believe the working (sale curve increasing) website is one that has a different look and feel to it, thus requiring high degrees of individuality in design.
I would disagree with that strongly. Experience with ANY UI is that users tend to prefer packages that look-and-feel the same as things they already know and use, but with different content - The more consistant your user interface is across different packages in a suite, the more usable it is considered to be (and the more each package adds to the value of the OTHER packages in the suite). There is no reason this isn't valid for websites, and many people already say it is.
If a user is familiar with site a, and does click-pulldown-select-order to get (say) a book, then goes to YOUR site and does click-pulldown-select-order to get (say) a CD, then he will be pleased with himself for how quickly he did that, and state he feels "comfortable" with the site, when in fact he is merely conditioned to the style of the site from elsewhere. If you need proof, think of the time it took to figure out exactly what goes where here on slashdot - then go to any of the Slashcode sites and note how familiar it feels - even though the content and style is different, the interface is reassuringly the same. --
I really wish people would stop coming up with these things, and then describing them in language like:
The purpose of composition modeling in WebML is to define which nodes make up the hypertext contained in the Web site. More precisely,
composition modeling specifies content units (units for short), i.e., the atomic information elements that may appear in the Web site, and pages,
i.e., containers by means of which information is actually clustered for delivery to the user. In a concrete setting, e.g., an HTML or WML
implementation of a WebML site, pages and units are mapped to suitable constructs in the delivery language
Because I just know that sometime I'll be asked to work on a site using it, probably with a short deadline...
webstires dont have to be engineered like large software projects. any website with a good editor which shows all the pages with links graphically should be enough. and anyway, for dynamic websites you need to do a lot of analysis on server load and stuff which webml doesnt do.,
And of doubling the time to get the job done, the few times I've used off the shelf shopping carts (not exactly the same, but) I've had to write/rewrite more code than it would have taken me to build a system from the ground up.
The thing with tools like this is that they really appeal to management types, especially with all the hip marketing buzzwords (pet hate, along with hip marketing types) used to sell them.
I've been designing sites since around the time BGCOLOR arrived, and I've never found any 'system' that was more effective than hand edititing the code, otherwise you have no feel for what is going on and if something breaks or bends you don't know where to start to fix it, if you even notice it in the first place.
Have you ever tried getting a web site of sufficient complexity working well across several browsers/platforms? It is a nightmare, at least for a perfectionist. IE4/win IE4/mac IE5/win IE5/mac NS4/win Mozilla/win NS4/x etc etc... they all do layout and scripting differently and NOBODY does it right.
There are very few truly good web architects out there, but the ones that are definitely have enough headaches to deal with.
Slashdot Mirror
This leads me to believe the working (sale curve increasing) website is one that has a different look and feel to it, thus requiring high degrees of individuality in design.
I would disagree with that strongly. Experience with ANY UI is that users tend to prefer packages that look-and-feel the same as things they already know and use, but with different content - The more consistant your user interface is across different packages in a suite, the more usable it is considered to be (and the more each package adds to the value of the OTHER packages in the suite). There is no reason this isn't valid for websites, and many people already say it is.
If a user is familiar with site a, and does click-pulldown-select-order to get (say) a book, then goes to YOUR site and does click-pulldown-select-order to get (say) a CD, then he will be pleased with himself for how quickly he did that, and state he feels "comfortable" with the site, when in fact he is merely conditioned to the style of the site from elsewhere. If you need proof, think of the time it took to figure out exactly what goes where here on slashdot - then go to any of the Slashcode sites and note how familiar it feels - even though the content and style is different, the interface is reassuringly the same.
--
-=DaveHowe=-
The purpose of composition modeling in WebML is to define which nodes make up the hypertext contained in the Web site. More precisely, composition modeling specifies content units (units for short), i.e., the atomic information elements that may appear in the Web site, and pages, i.e., containers by means of which information is actually clustered for delivery to the user. In a concrete setting, e.g., an HTML or WML implementation of a WebML site, pages and units are mapped to suitable constructs in the delivery language
Because I just know that sometime I'll be asked to work on a site using it, probably with a short deadline...
Like thier toolcube though.
~ppppppppö
webstires dont have to be engineered like large software projects. any website with a good editor which shows all the pages with links graphically should be enough. and anyway, for dynamic websites you need to do a lot of analysis on server load and stuff which webml doesnt do.,
The thing with tools like this is that they really appeal to management types, especially with all the hip marketing buzzwords (pet hate, along with hip marketing types) used to sell them.
I've been designing sites since around the time BGCOLOR arrived, and I've never found any 'system' that was more effective than hand edititing the code, otherwise you have no feel for what is going on and if something breaks or bends you don't know where to start to fix it, if you even notice it in the first place.
~ppppppppö
Have you ever tried getting a web site of sufficient complexity working well across several browsers/platforms? It is a nightmare, at least for a perfectionist. IE4/win IE4/mac IE5/win IE5/mac NS4/win Mozilla/win NS4/x etc etc... they all do layout and scripting differently and NOBODY does it right.
There are very few truly good web architects out there, but the ones that are definitely have enough headaches to deal with.