Simon Willison’s Weblog

Independent Days on Daring Fireball

9th July 2003

Daring Fireball: Independent Days. A sprawling essay that covers web design principles, corporate vs. independent sites, Mac punditry and the justification for adding Google Ads to a weblog. Well worth a read. I particularly liked this quote, although it was more of a side-point than a key point of the article:

Less markup. Less scripting. Fewer navigation elements. Fewer colors. Fewer graphics. Omit needless words. This is how you make a good web site. I know this for a fact.

Such design goals, however worthy, are notoriously difficult to sell to clients. A good web site costs a lot of money, and for a lot of money, most clients want a lot of web site. Lots of scripts. Lots of graphics. Lots of needless words.