Thoughts on Design at the Netizens Cyberstop

My design on these pages are mediated through two major topics, Considerations and Limitations.

Considerations

Respect

The web is greatly populated by the over-use of graphics, color, backgrounds, funny fonts, image maps and otherwise extraneous bandwidth wasting. Extraneous uses of these features on a page increase the time necessary to access the information stored on web pages by people on all connections. Backgrounds themselves take away so much time before you get to see what is at a site.

I use lynx and prefer to use lynx as it is much faster then any of the graphical web browsers for getting to the content of web stites. I respect people who are on-line using a 2400 baud modem and normal serial dialup connections. Not everyone has access to graphical web browsers, and imagemaps and web designers who do not use the ALT tag limit access to those sites.

While style is nice, content is what is important. That is why you you will see no backgrouds, fancy fonts or unnecessary graphics on my pages.

In addition, I have tried to make a balance between original content and hotlinks available at my site. I am bored silly by web pages which only point to other web pages. When you go somplace on-line you want to find something interesting and worthwhile the effort it took to go there! Indexes are fine if they are unique in the information they gather. Random "Hot links!" or "What's Cool" lists which pride themselves are lots of hot air.

Netscape extensions

Netscape additions to HTML are more attempts to make profit by selling their software rather then contributing to the WWW. While these additions might make web pages look nice and provide more flexability, they go against the original design principles of HTML and the WWW.

HTML was designed to make page design possible which ALL browsers could read. Thus someone could design a page using the <strong></strong> pair, and some browsers would change the font, others would inverse the video. This is different then using the <bold></bold> or <italics></italics> which command a browser to emphasize in a certain fashion.

The netscape extensions promote elitism of platforms if they wish to become part of standard code.

Limitations

Time

Or rather the lack of time. These pages would be more complete and there would be more of them, if I had more free time to create and publish on the Web.

Usenet

For me, Usenet represents more of the spirit and soul of the Net then the World Wide Web. As such I try to devote more of my emphasis on following and posting to newsgroups. Sadly this happens less now then before too.

Usenet represents more of the active dynamic then the Web to me. I am more interested in what comes out of the discussion of different people then the web page which comes from one persons time and effort.

Collaboration and cooperation, even by people of differing viewpoints, is much more the fruit of this new world.

Now that I have outlined the considerations and limitations which guide the design at the Netizens Cyberstop, please contact me if you would like to be helpful in advancing this site. In particular, I am interested in people who would want to be helpful with my two major projects:

In trying to spread the research Ronda and I have done about the Internet and Usenet, we are looking for mirror sites around the world to make it easier for people to access the book. Similarly I would like to mirror my music list in other locations. In addition, any help in maintaining the music list would be greatly appreicated. I just have too many links to go through and to keep up to date.

Please e-mail me at hauben@columbia.edu if you have disk space, time or energy to contribute. Thanks!

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Michael Hauben <hauben@columbia.ed.edu>