i confess i don't get this
i know u know much more than me about this acidus but i don't see the arguments as presented in the article as self evident
i don't want all the web pages i visit to look the same
i enjoy a varied and interesting visual journey as well as one of content
i am a fundamentally visual person
idealogically i like the idea of the reader/user being in control
but the situation will evolve
you are setting out an idealogical position -- an arguably extremist and certainly presciptive position -- "things should be like this"
they may well move to that point but you're fighting 500 years of print tradition and the written tradition of the monks with their extraordinary layouts before that (in the west) calligraphy (in the east)
visual style is important
it is an element of semiotics
i'm reminded of those (who i strongly sympathise with) who rail against fashion -- high street fashion -- alternative fashion -- music fashion etc --- fine we should be individuals but we're fundamentally not -- some are more individualistic than others but fashion is an element of fitting in and being social -- we mirror the behaviour of others - that is part of the social dialogue and multi-threaded discourse -- i'm influenced a little by x and a little by y -- i identify to an extent with a particularly group, with a particular set of values, with a particular set of ideas. It is not merely a question of corporate identity. It is a statement on a fundamental level about who i'm as an individual and how I see myself fitting into society. To assert a visual style is content.
I'm not suggesting you are wrong but i do think there is more to this than technical questions.

[ I agree with this completely and will add my own completely separate argument that's based on pragmatism, devoid of artistic consideration.

That argument is that since you can't trust the user agents to actually do what they're supposed to do, developing a web page is aiming at a moving target already, even just for the PC platform. Try to evolve that to be universally readable on cell phones, screen readers, and all the rest... it's an exercise in absolute madness.

I recall my Second Disillusionment about 5 years ago, when CSS was new to me and i said to myself "Wow, this is smart, separate layout and content... brilliant!" So i get right into it, read the spec, learned the spec, read some books and web sites and started to see just how much bullshit you had to go through because of varying support for the specifications. Well, for IE do this shit, and then opera might freak out, because it's hella strict, and firefox will deal, but take 35 seconds to render.

So most people are happy to say, fuck it, ok, if the UA is going to ignore or fuck up half my work, I'll go with a print-emulating look that i don't even have to develop -- just grab a template and tweak the CSS. I did. And that was just after not getting it to look how I wanted. God forbid I should have tried to make it universal, or even nearly so.

You want web standards? Start enforcing them in the browsers, I say.

Further more, I'm going to need a lot more convincing that users either want or are even marginally fucking capable of handling their own layout choices. Are you kidding me? Joe Average is going to decide he wants news sites displayed like this and blogs like this and porno like this and ...? fuck no. Most of these monkeys can't even manage to not use IE because it's what's already installed.

I'll support the argument that most web pages suck. Readily. It's for the same reason that so many UI's suck in general : being a programmer (even a Web Author, pretentious title notwithstanding) doesn't make you any good at interacting with humans. UI is hard and we have special people for that, but not many and they cost a lot, so we muddle through as best we can, which is often shite.

You want me to accept that the users should now become their own UI designers? Doesn't sound good to me. I may not know much about UI, but I know that my generic, fixed width, locked down site design is at least capable of conveying the relevant content to a large percentage of the public. -k]

RE: Publishing on the Web Is Different!