Like all design issues, there is no one right answer.  But I will add
a few comments to the postings from yesterday.
 
Denys writes ...
 
> 3- Design your site so that it can be available to both the lowest common
> denominator and so that the latest and greatest browser can show some new
> features.  This option is the most work to the web page designer.
>
 
I don't think this is possible, but Denys is welcome to try.
Personally, I prefer sites that say "use Netscape x.y to view this
site".  At least I know what I'm getting myself into by not using what
they suggest.
 
> have the ALT keyword on a couple of graphics, notably on the default or home
> page.  Situation quickly remedied,  it is fixed now.
>
 
Denys misses my point.  Adding ALT tags is a band-aid solution that
doesn't address the fact that the whole design of the pages was for
graphical browsers only.  This is a design issue -- not an
implementation issue.
 
>
> Sites with only text and no hope of showing anything else but text, may send
> the wrong impression to the, shall we say, sophisticated browser.
>
 
The Robelle Web site is almost exclusively text and we have received a
lot of positive comments about the material that we offer.  But it's
quite possible that Denys is right and style is more important than
substance.
 
> One would believe that most everyone in an organization has web
> browsing capability.  Is this correct?  I wonder how many companies
> sanction all their employees with PCs browsing the web during work
> hours.  I was under the obviously mistaken impression that most web
> browsing occured at home.
 
The Web is one of the most important information resources available
on the planet.  We certainly sanction our employees to browse the
Web during working hours.  In fact, we've lost count of how many
projects in the last year that we have pursued and either:
 
1.  Could not have completed without Web access, and/or
 
2.  Got done a *lot* faster due to Web access.
 
 
Then Jeff writes ...
 
> So what's my point?  I dunno :-) I "think" that it is, if you're going
> to offer anything via http, you had best capitalize on the effort.
> For just grabbing files, web browsers support ftp:// URL's.  If you're
> going to go to the trouble of replacing that functionality with http,
> you should make it a worthwhile effort, or at least make it a "dog and
> pony show".
 
I would disagree with Jeff.  Adding text to make it clear what your
ftp files are for and how to use them is valuable and in my experience
much better than the README files that one usually finds on FTP sites.
I also think that they hypertext power of links is a very, very
powerful feature of the Web and much more important than graphics.  Of
course at Robelle we believe strongly in substance before style.  That
doesn't mean that we haven't used graphics (see the latest issue of
What's Up, Documentation? for example):
 
     http://www.robelle.com/newsletter/latest.html
 
 
Cheers,
 
David    <[log in to unmask]>