[thelist] the use of lynx

[David Kutcher]

> > Does anyone still use lynx?  realistically?  or is that spending extra k
to
> > appease one half of one percent?
>
>
> Oooooh, you sinner. How much time does it take to put in alt desc's ?
> Ton's of people use lynx including me. Bit of an unsavoury attitude
> there David.

Okay, so this email came in right before I was about to quit for the night.

How is it unsavory?  It's called business reality.  Before I emailed those
stats out, my site had less than 1/2 of 1% using a non IE5+ or Mozilla4+
browser.  One of the first questions we ask when we go into a scoping
meeting with a client is related to target browsers.  We give the %.  We
state the facts.  They say what do we lose by catering to that 1/2 of 1%?

Now, if that 1/2 of 1% is important to you, sure, I'd say go ahead and make
sure that every link and every image has alt text and descriptions.  I'd say
that if you didn't build class-dependent sites and you wanted to cater to
*everyone* that it was necessary.

Me?  I'd say that k is wasted information on 99.5% of the viewing populace.
It's better used on a stupid animated gif.

I used to be the same way in that the web was about information; that you
could turn off the images and still have an experience.  Then I guess I came
to a realization that the web post 1996 isn't about information as much as
it's about media and brand messaging.  To the companies that pay my bills,
that's more important than providing info to the person browsing on a
text-only browser.  Image is everything (I can't claim it as original
although I wish I could).  If you can't view em, get a new browser.

Yea, it's a hard-line attitude, but hell, that's how Jacob does it, so why
can't I?  ;)

David
www.confluentforms.com