Javascript, menus and SEO

[stymiee]

I am just playing devil's advocate so that I can hear your point of view on this matter: "Realistically, can we make everybody happy and should we try to?"

Your goal is to make everyone in your target audience happy.

[DaveWoods]

Emulate this user experience with semantic markup and some decorative elements.

No reason why you couldn't. Flash could obviously be used for the images as it has been but there's no reason why you couldn't create a very similar menu using CSS which could work very similarly and also be accessible to search engines. The main content could also be in HTML and you could also use AJAX to enhance the functionality to limit page reloads if you wanted to replicate that functionality.

So if my target market is Goths, I should make my website white so that everyone can find it pleasant, remove all religious memorables so not to offend certain religious groups, etc. etc.?

I think you've probably got me down as a Jakob Nielsen (all links must be blue and turn purple) kind of person but this isn't what I'm saying in the slightest. Create a website using good semantic code that's accessible and then use CSS to style it how you wish, use JavaScript/Ajax to improve functionality and use Flash if you want to enhance the presentation.

It is impossible because for every person out there, we have a particular combination of tastes. More so, taste change frequently; technology changes, some people update quicker, others slower, etc. etc. You are trying to kill a bush fire with your hands.

For this etopian world of yours, you can start with standardising the browser and then we can talk again.

I'm not sure why this is a problem? Supporting IE5.5 and upwards requires a little extra knowledge but once you understand the bugs and their fixes there's no reason why you can't easily support the majority of users.

Ah so the politicians of this decade made it illegal to "discriminate". Do we make cameras for blind people? I guess in a political correct world we do, but pretending a disability doesn't exist doesn't make it go away. Instead of forcing everyone (impossible task) to follow one set of rules, why not instead improve your readers for blind people. If I am allergic to curry, then sorry but I can't eat it. Period! Why even show me curry? Political correctness leads to mediocracy.

Now before everybody think I am a coldheart *******, I am not. I am just playing devil's advocate so that I can hear your point of view on this matter: "Realistically, can we make everybody happy and should we try to?"

The accessibility debate is a whole other topic but the gist of my initial post was to point out that there's no need to go out of your way to hinder accessibility.

Use as much creative flair to enhance the appearance and functionality as you can but just ensure that the bolts that actually hold the site together are accessible as it's not even remotely hard to achieve a basic level of accessibility which will help users and search engines alike.