Thread

I am designing a site for a new client. I showed him visuals and mocked it up. He was happy. Built the thing, fairly happy, but I was getting negative vibes. Was it the layout, colours?

Eventually after much back and forth he asked me that that he wanted everything on the front page to fit in the window. He didn’t want any scrolling. Ummmmm I said well you have a lot of news and info on the front page. He replied that he wanted it there and could I push everything up. Of course I explained that people do not have a problem scrolling. This was inconceivable to him.

His solution is to kill all the leading, maybe even make it negative and reduce the text size from 12px to 9 or 8px!

I explained that the text was laid out using proper leading and that it all flowed nicely. Also people will have a problem reading it. After much discussion and getting nowhere, he asked me to implement his brillaint plan.

I ended up just agreeing with everything. Really now, just wanting to finish this job, get paid and take my credit off the site.

I haven’t encountered this sort of ignorance before, but it takes the biscuit.

One less for the Portfolio :shut:

Well yes, indeed. But I am also saddened by it, as he seemed to understand about the needs of the web in the initial meeting.

You’ve got to email me a screen shot or a link, hehe, it reminds me of one of the owners of a print shop I worked for a few years ago.  I’m sure you’ve probably already heard this, too, but it feels appropriate to link to it again: Make the logo bigger!.

That song is hilarious!

That song is good alright. I will post a visual when I get around to wrecking it for him. I know it’s only a few lines of CSS, but it will take time, mentally, to prepare for it.

I feel for you, did you explain about different monitor and browser size settings? Probably too late but as someone saud - one less for the portfolio!

Most importantly, did you explain about people with bad eyesight? 😉

Oh how I explained that his monitor size and res was one in many! But I think he is convinced that his is the standard. Oh how god awful it all sounds. The client just wants his way whatever happens.

One less for the Portfolio :shut:

Gah, I hate that feeling.

The only thing I can think of is to setup tracking on the site right away so you can actually see what the typical screen size/resolution visiting the site is. That way you can make the argument from actual data from the site.

But I admit, your current plan is probably the most reasonable 😊

Make the logo bigger!.

You can’t handle a bigger logo! 😊

Ridiculous…When I was doing the original BestBuy site a lot of CE products had a lot of specs, went on for many pages down. We did a study to see if this was a problem, used the long page and the same page splint to multiples. Ended up people didn’t mind the vertical scroll at all (within reason), they’re used to doing it in email and word processing docs. A few months later someone else released a study that verified ours. Horizontal scrolling is a whole different matter.

Bet once you get it redone there will be enough negative feedback to change it back…don’t discard your original CSS 😊

Oh yes I have kept the CSS alright so we will see how it goes.

Leslie that is a good idea to track it and show the results.

To bad you don’t have access to the boss machine, you could just change the default sizes on his machine and allow him to wallow in his eye-strained world.