More on WebTV

[Sara T.]

Just wanted to respond to Andrew Wohrley's preview of WebTV.
First, I was glad to hear from someone who's actually looked at it.
I have not.

However, yesterday our library system put on a program on Web design; it
was at a rather basic level, but the speaker, a specail librarian who's
also been designing Web pages for 3 years, Kim Last, had some very
interesting info about WebTV.  Once I get some urls from her on WebTV info,
I'll post them.  But for now, here are some points she passed on:
Web TV only allows for 544 pixel-wide screens, PLUS does NOT have a
horizontal scroll function!  So many/most regular pages go off the screen
to the right on Web TV, and there's nothing the viewer can do about it.
Also, WebTV has its own set of html tags that are extremely different, in
large part, from HTML 2.0 or 3.0 or 3.2 or even from Netscape extensions.
Plus, the WebTV people (whomever they are!) strongly recommend AGAINST
white backgrounds on pages -- seems white flickers just awfully on TVs,
even though it makes pages much easier to read on a computer monitor.
Since none of the users/viewers of WebTV will presumably be creating Web
pages themselves, and since it is unlikely that many of us will write pages
to WebTV specs, I am hopeful that WebTV will become more compliant with the
rest of the world, nd with all the millions of pages already out there!

Sara

*************************************
Sara Tompson, Library Administrator
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
PO Box 500, MS 109, Batavia, IL 60510
630/840-6014           sarat at fnal.gov