2. Sites should use technology that is accessible to the masses

As my trusty lead developer Ryan pointed out in one of his previous posts, lots of websites that were buzzword compliant 3 years ago (i.e. Macromedia/Adobe/Shockwave Flash heavy) are now feeling the true burden that those technologies have placed on those sites.

At best, those websites do not have their content indexed properly by search engines and at worst they are not viewable by mobile browsers.

Most people would agree that being accessible to the largest possible audience is critical to the success of most companies, but that obvious fact is often overshadowed by the glitz and glamour of the latest web bobble and companies can inadvertantly walk down a path of increasing exclusion.

People love to hear the sizzle, but they come to eat the steak.

The site's content is that steak.

Our method at REM is to take a judicious approach to all of the available technologies at our disposal to create sizzle for a site, while allowing easy access to the steak.

We LOVE jQuery.

We LOVE HTML5 too.

In contrast, we've created sites completely in HTML4 with small javascript footprints becase it was the best solution for older intranets in larger corporations.

We take a look at the obvious truth that sites should use technology with the largest accessibilty footprint and build our solutions in ways that help accomplish that.