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Web Dogma — is it still relevant?

Last year I linked to an inter­view with Eric Reiss over at Boxes and Arrows. The inter­view explores the thoughts that went into cre­at­ing the Web Dogma: Web Dogma 2006 Any­thing that exists only to sat­is­fy the intern­al polit­ics of the site own­er must be eliminated. Any­thing that exists only to sat­is­fy the ego of the design­er…

Last year I linked to an inter­view with Eric Reiss over at Boxes and Arrows. The inter­view explores the thoughts that went into cre­at­ing the Web Dogma:

Web Dogma 2006

  1. Any­thing that exists only to sat­is­fy the intern­al polit­ics of the site own­er must be eliminated.
  2. Any­thing that exists only to sat­is­fy the ego of the design­er must be eliminated.
  3. Any­thing that is irrel­ev­ant with­in the con­text of the page must be eliminated.
  4. Any fea­ture or tech­nique that reduces the vis­it­or’s abil­ity to nav­ig­ate freely must be reworked or eliminated.
  5. Any inter­act­ive object that forces the vis­it­or to guess its mean­ing must be reworked or eliminated.
  6. No soft­ware, apart from the browser itself, must be required to get the site to work correctly.
  7. Con­tent must be read­able first, print­able second, down­load­able third.
  8. Usab­il­ity must nev­er be sac­ri­ficed for the sake of a style guide.
  9. No vis­it­or must be forced to register or sur­render per­son­al data unless the site own­er is unable to provide a ser­vice or com­plete a trans­ac­tion without it.
  10. Break any of these rules soon­er than do any­thing out­right barbarous.

It’s been a year since it was cre­ated, and I’m won­der­ing if it still has the same rel­ev­ance as it did last year…especially with the increas­ing inclu­sion of more inter­activ­ity (AJAX and Flash ele­ments) on web­sites, and a great­er trend away from pure ‘Web­sites’ into more hybrid social media sites.

For example, item 7 does­n’t really work with­in the con­text of Google Spread­sheet. Item 9, the sur­ren­der­ing of per­son­al data, is becom­ing more of a norm in the online world where busi­nesses need to recoup the ROI of an online property.

And do we need anoth­er item that deals with an online code of con­duct, as evid­enced by the Kathy Sierra incid­ent?

So what do the big brains think? I think it’s mostly rel­ev­ant, maybe needs a bit of dust­ing off, etc, but for the most part, it works, which is why it’s still on my cube wall.

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6 responses to “Web Dogma — is it still relevant?”

  1. Eric Reiss Avatar
    Eric Reiss

    Hi.

    Good ques­tions. Since the Dogma are the guid­ing philo­sophy of our own com­pany, we dis­cuss them reg­u­larly. Here are some thoughts.

    With regards to AJAX etc, a “page” is much more dynam­ic than it was two years ago. How­ever, as long as things are dis­played on a two-dimen­sion­al screen, the meta­phor seems to work.

    With regard to point 7, as long as an on-line app lets you view stuff dir­ectly on the screen and not force you to down­load a pdf, then I’m pretty happy. The point is to let people con­tin­ue to view and manip­u­late inform­a­tion with­in the con­text of whatever browser or pro­gram they are already using.

    With regard to point 9, my aim was to pre­vent com­pan­ies from for­cing people to sur­render per­son­al inform­a­tion if it was­n’t rel­ev­ant to the trans­ac­tion. Giv­en the cur­rent trends, I’d say it is more import­ant today than ever before.

    Cheers,
    Eric

    Reply
  2. Brad Grier Avatar
    Brad Grier

    Hi Eric, thanks for drop­ping by.

    Item 7 — agreed, the cla­ri­fic­a­tion you provide above helps.
    Item 9 — I’m start­ing to believe there’s a need to devel­op and main­tain an ‘online’ iden­tity or two, and a ‘real’ iden­tity. The online iden­tit­ies are ulti­mately dis­pos­able… but there is a time when you’d want to use your ‘real’ one online..ie with bank­ing, order­ing books, etc.

    So the line blurs. Where do you use a ‘real’ iden­tity, and where would you use a dis­pos­able one? Fod­der for anoth­er post, methinks.

    Brad

    Reply
  3. Eric Reiss Avatar
    Eric Reiss

    Sadly, I agree that there’s prob­ably value in cre­at­ing a false on-line iden­tity. But the entire point of Dogma #9 was to make this unnecessary.

    If you check out per­son­al­ity tests on the web, I’m flab­ber­gas­ted by how many actu­ally expect me to tell them who I am — and without even both­er­ing to post a pri­vacy policy. As pro­files (Flickr, Linked­In, Face­book, MySpace, etc.) become more and more pub­lic, I’m tend­ing to get more and more private. I’m not para­noid, just care­ful — like some radio­activ­ity, online per­son­al info can have an uncom­fort­ably long half-life.

    Reply
  4. Brad Grier Avatar
    Brad Grier

    Yeah, I agree with that. Any­thing writ­ten in a pub­lic space is likely to remain online in one form or anoth­er for a long long time.

    As an example, I would have nev­er sus­pec­ted that my Usen­et posts about Amiga soft­ware would still be around and read­able today. I wrote them in Octo­ber of ’91.

    Ima­gine if I was dis­cuss­ing a per­son­al situ­ation or event. That long lived text could ‘haunt’ me for a while.

    Reply
  5. Eric Reiss Avatar
    Eric Reiss

    Hi Brad,

    Just check­ing in to say that the Web Dogma are still alive and well. Many more trans­la­tions since we last cor­res­pon­ded, includ­ing Croa­tian and Bulgarian.

    Frankly, I’m amazed at how robust this philo­sophy has proven to be.

    Cheers,
    Eric

    Reply
  6. Brad Grier Avatar
    Brad Grier

    Hi Eric, great news that. 

    And yeah, it seem kinda simple, yet usu­ally the most endur­ing truths are the simple ones that are easy to grasp and implement. 

    I’m amazed at how many orgs. are *still* too self-centred to under­stand that.

    Reply

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