[thelist] the use of lynx

[Steve Cook]

The first thing I think of when reading your comments about alt tags is that
you are being a little short-sighted by matching the audience who will see
the alt tags with the people who use Lynx to view the site.

What about:
	People with low bandwidth who turn off images to save time
	The visually impaired
	The times when your site is answering so many requests that it keeps
timing out, but the information in the alt tags allows people to make sense
of the site even though the images aren't loading.

There are probably other reasons too. But then again, it's a free world, you
can build your sites the way you want. Looking simply at the statistics of
how many people use Lynx is probably not a realistic measure of how many
people could use the alt tags. But then again, if you are working with
clients who's main focus is branding their message then you may well be
quite right in your assumptions. The site is probably completely unusable
unless you have one of the latest browsers anyway. And it's probably not of
interest to the @narchists and rebels who aren't using the latest
follow-the-herd technology, so that's alright then as well ;-)

Oh well, just my 2 öre.

.steve


> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Kutcher [mailto:david_kutcher at hotmail.com]
> Sent: den 27 februari 2002 08:40
> To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
> Subject: [thelist] the use of lynx
>
<SNIP>
>
> 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.
> <SNIP>