[WEB4LIB] At the risk of being burnt...

[Paul Taylor]

Watch what you say... 'College age' nowadays includes people from 16 to 66, 
and sometimes well beyond that!
-Paul


On Monday 05 August 2002 12:52 pm, Steve Garwood wrote:
> to death by Flames :-)
>
> Flash, Java, Javascript, HTML, Animations, 8pt text....
>
> As long as we know our USERS and are meeting their needs isn't that the
> point?
>
> Granted we can't design all sites for all people, but I do think that the
> AUDIENCE focus is paramount. I.E. if I was designing a site for College age
> students, I'd want a different feel, look, etc. than a site for the
> Elderly.
>
> IMHO, I think libraries as a whole can win the "Ugliest sites ever created"
> award as an "industry" and especially in this era of trying to attract
> younger audiences, perhaps including some of these technologies (gratuitous
> as they may seem to be) isn't such a bad idea.
>
> Flame Away :-)
>
> Steve
>
> *************************************************************************
> Steve Garwood
> Program and Services Coordinator, INFOLINK
> Tel: 732-752-7720  Fax: 732-752-7785
> Toll free: 866-505-LINK  Fax: 800-793-8007
> Email to: sgarwood at infolink.org
> Web: http://www.infolink.org
> "Leadership can be summed up in two words: 'Follow Me'" - Richard Marcinko
> *************************************************************************
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Thomas Dowling [SMTP:tdowling at ohiolink.edu]
> Sent:	Monday, August 05, 2002 12:26 PM
> To:	Multiple recipients of list
> Subject:	[WEB4LIB] Re: browser differences
>
> At 11:37 AM 8/5/2002, Steve Cramer wrote:
> >The Journal of Electronic Publishing published an interesting study of
>
> users'
>
> >perception of Flash-enable sites.
> >
> >http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/07-03/raney.html
> >An Experimental Study: The Relationship Between Multimedia Features and
> >Information Retrieval
>
> This article was discussed in some detail back in April.  Comments that
> stand out when I reread the thread:
>
> "The largest flaw that I see in the research is that the Flash and
> HTML sites they chose for comparison were top of the line,
> professionally produced commercial sites. The second gaping flaw was
> no control for bandwidth limitations." - George Porter
>
> "As I read it, the study claims there is neither an advantage nor a
> disadvantage to using Flash if you are measuring the ability to
> retrieve information....So as I see it, the many other disadvantages
> of Flash (proprietary standard, awful for document management,
> bandwidth suck, inaccessible*) remain to advise one against its use
> on serious sites." - Charles Gimon
>
> [*Flash MX is supposed to allow substantially accessible Flash
> pages, so kudos to Macromedia in that regard.]
>
> "...HTML is not a good language choice for creating sites that look
> like they were developed in Flash." - yrs trly
>
> I remain convinced that the great majority of pages using Flash have no
> good reason for doing so, and by supporting a reliance on proprietary
> software impede efforts to create similar open source solutions.  All IMO,
> of course.
>
>
>
> Thomas Dowling
> OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
> tdowling at ohiolink.edu

-- 
Paul Taylor
Computer Coordinator
Salem-South Lyon District Library
9800 Pontiac Trail
South Lyon, MI 48178

248-437-6431 phone
248-437-6593 fax
http://south-lyon.lib.mi.us