[WEB4LIB] Re: 99.9% of web sites obsolete?

[Jerry Kuntz]

The article makes it sound like the 90s were the bad old days. IMHO, 
it was also a time when the Web was more democratic and full of possibilities. I'm concerned that the trend with standards has been towards very much more complex coding--and that affordable editing tools have not kept pace. In 1997, a kid with a text editor could create a web page (and find a host to serve it). Would the early years of the web have been so exciting if content was only able to have been developed and published by a trained elite?
What are the options now for someone to create web pages without extensive training? FrontPage at $169.00? Dreamweaver at $399.00?
Perhaps this explains why blogging has become so popular--it's taking the content back to people, rather than professional media producers. I wonder if those whose serve on standards committees bother thinking about this, or whether they just consider agreement upon a standard--any standard--to be a sufficient democratizing tool.

[old-time PACS-L readers...where is Vigdor now, anyway?]
---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: "Karen Harker" <Karen.Harker at UTSouthwestern.edu>
Reply-To: Karen.Harker at UTSouthwestern.edu
Date:  Thu, 12 Sep 2002 05:13:53 -0700 (PDT)

>To get back to the subject of the email, I think what should be taken
>into consideration is the audience of the site you are designing. If
>your audience is set on using v2-3 of Netscape, then you should probably
>code for that. Where the threshold lies is subjective...5%, 15%, 25%? 
>As in most of life, balance is the key. Bandwidth of HTML is not as
>imperative a concern as bandwidth of images or audio files. But we
>should realize that standards are very, very difficult to create and
>enforce. After 100 years of making cars, we still have few
>interchangeable parts.  
>
>
>
>Karen R. Harker, MLS
>UT Southwestern Medical Library
>5323 Harry Hines Blvd.
>Dallas, TX  75390-9049
>214-648-1698
>http://www.swmed.edu/library/
>>>> Paul Taylor <ptaylor at tln.lib.mi.us> 09/11/02 18:14 PM >>>
>Dredged from Slashdot--an excerpt from "Forward Compatability: Designing
>and 
>Building with Standards"
>
>Here's the URL:
>http://www.digital-web.com/features/feature_2002-09.shtml
>
>
>And here's the text:
>
>99.9% of Websites Are Obsolete
>
>An excerpt from Forward Compatibility: Designing & Building With
>Standards
>By Jeffrey Zeldman
>
>-- 
>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
>
>
>
>


--
Jerry Kuntz
Electronic Resources Consultant
Ramapo Catskill Library System
jkuntz at rcls.org

--