Re: hmmm... servers producing per-browser customised output.

CyberWeb ([email protected])
Wed, 2 Nov 1994 12:50:13 -0500 (EST)


Jeff Smith wrote:
>
> |>anthony baxter wrote:
> |>>[...]
> |>> I'm dreading the day where pages are just one large imagemap gif of the
> |>> page, exactly as the provider wants it to look.
> |>>
> |> I have been involved with a group who were contemplating setting
> |> up a WWW-based newspaper. One of their major concerns was how to
> |> get a satisfactory layout. In particular, many of the members
> |> wanted to be able to preserve the columnar style of classical
> |> newspapers. I'd expect the <Table> tag to be good for this, but
> |> till that's widely supported, one approach that I demonstrated
> |> to the group was exactly that: pages done as gifs! And they liked
> |> it..
> Yes, but you can't do searches on the text and can't view them on
> non-graphic terminals.
>
Before I get a barrage of these, I had better complete the ellipsis (..)
- I wasn't advocating this as *the* approach; it has other drawbacks
too. My unstated point was that there *may well be* applications for
which presentation is so important that extraordinary implementations
might be considered. For example, a WWW-based newspaper that gets
its revenue from advertising would like to ensure that the ads
are nicely integrated with the surrounding text, and don't get
switched off. One (Procrustean) way would be to make the whole
page an image. BUT I hope that the advent of <Table> and beautiful
browsers like Arena will do a lot for the information providers
who want to present their products attractively. If you haven't
yet looked at Arena, rush out to
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Arena/
(UNIX only, so far :*(
_______________________Alan_Richmond__________________________
CyberWeb http://www.charm.net/~web/CWSW.html World
SoftWare http://www.charm.net/~web/Vlib.html Wide
WWW Systems Engineering [email protected] Web