16th January, 1998

I Assumed People Want Their Pages Visited By People Other Than Just Themselves. More And More Are Making Me Re-Think My Assumption.

  Sometimes I wish the Internet hadn't become so popular. It used to be a big bunch of computer nerds threaded together. Now all types of people have access to the World Wide Web, Internet Relay Chat, Echo Mail (Yes, "E-Mail" is NOT in fact short for "Electronic Mail"), and all the other services available through the 'net.

  Don't get me wrong, the 'net would be pretty boring if it were filled with ONLY people who discussed the usability of revision h over g of MS Crap. People who aren't "nerds" add to the entertainment value of the network - not to say that nerds aren't entertaining.

  One area where I'd LOVE people to be a bit more knowledgeable is when they're putting together their home pages. Maybe if some of these authors had a greater understanding of how the network operates and the diversity of machines connected to it, they'd put a bit more thought into the design of their pages.

  What I'm getting at is that some people don't realise just how long some pages can take to download. There's no use putting the blame on people having "crap ISPs", even the best provider can be crippled by problems in the network, and all will suffer to some extent due to the sheer volume of traffic at peak times.

  The main thief as far as bandwidth (and therefore speed) goes, are graphics. To maximise speed, we'd have to go back to the days of Lynx, and other text-only browsers. What web designers must realise is that for some people it's not a matter of "going back" to use text-only browsers, it's a current reality for them either because they want to or have to not be able to view graphics. Some people, even if they do have the latest release of a popular browser with graphics capability, browse with image loading turned off because of the speed gain it gives them.

  Life would become a lot easier for such people if web authors defined their graphics fully with ALT tags. What's more, a text menu here and there wouldn't be such a bad idea, either. Remember that apart from all that, some people use voice synthesizers to listen to pages instead of viewing them. If you don't define the ALT tag, they'll end up get this sort of effect: "Click one of the buttons to check out my pages: image, image, image, image, image". Understand what I'm getting at?

  For those of us who do load graphics, you can improve the situation by properly defining the height and width of images, so that the page doesn't have to be re-drawn everytime a graphic is downloaded. Don't use these tags to re-size images. If you have a 600x400 graphic, but you'd prefer it to be displayed at 300x200, then scale it using an appropriate piece of software.

  What's more, ask yourself if that image really needs to be there - does it add anything to the page? Has it already been optimised? Is it a suitable size, does it use a reasonable number of colours? Is it in the optimum format for the type of graphic it is?

  That's all that comes to my mind on this topic at the moment. Having said all that I've said above, may I make the disclaimer that I in no way think that my site is the best and no-one can do any better. Far from it, but I do try to make it accessible to as many people as possible.

Copyright � 16th January 1998.
Opinions expressed here are purely those of Adam Smolarczyk.