From: Eugene Leitl (eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Sat Jul 03 1999 - 13:51:06 MDT
den Otter writes:
> Well, do you want transhumanism to remain obscure, or do you
> want it to grow? If you want the latter, you better start using some
I want it to grow, but in this early phase I'd like to recruit the
more intelligent people. Right now we're not in danger of getting too
many such, so we'd better watch our step.
> flashy graphics. Good-looking webpages simply get (a lot) more
> traffic and media attention, just like good-looking people get more
> attention than ugly or plain ones.
You make it sound as lots of traffic and media attention are all
absolutely good things. Cryonics, for instance, has generated lots of
media attention. Since 98% of anything mass culture produces is crap
I don't care much for transhumanism being appreciated by the mass
culture. Call me a snob, if you wish.
> Frankly I've never understood what's so transhuman about making
> minimal use of webpage-enhancing technologies. IMHO, a "perfect"
> webpage is not only fast-loading and informative, but also visually
> pleasing. The design has to enhance the desired emotional impact
> of the text. Transhuman pages should ideally icorporate the latest
> in web technology and artistic design; a boring text-only page
> (some people don't even bother to set a background color) is fit for
> Luddites and Amish, not for technophiles like us.
Since its very beginnings, and particularly now, the IT technology is
suffering from one big problem: inability to define standards that age
well. The more bells & whistles you use, the shorter the readability
window and the percentile of users you can reach. In contrast to a
"boring text-only page" as http://smople.thehub.com.au/~mitch/ , a
'cute' graphics-only entry page won't get indexed by search engines.
Do you think all these guys don't know anything about web design?
http://xent.ics.uci.edu/
http://www.ai.mit.edu/~shivers/
http://photo.net/philg/
> If your cake looks like crap, people will be reluctant to taste
> it. If it looks delicious on the other hand...
A browser-dependant page with huge gifs, Java, Shockwave and JavaScript
sure looks like crap to me.
I guess I should be looking for Grail or Opera. Losing state in 30
Netscrape windows due to crash (even with Java/JavaScript disabled)
annoys me beyond words. What's the value of a stable OS if your apps
crash?
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