RE: A "one size fits all" personalized web page?

Hi, Charles

Read through the pages on the Semantic Web.  Why is the Semantic Web needed?

I believe you might be confusing strings of text with semantic information.
They are not the same.

For example, suppose that a web page is about Chicago.  Let's say that among
links there are:

    <A src="#chicago_cows.html"> Chicago Cows </A>
    <A src="#chicago_bulls.html"> Chicago Bulls </A>

The strings of text are "Chicago Cows" and "Chicago Bulls".  Now, suppose that
the web page user wants the links related to sports to be at the top of
the page.  If a user wanted his user agent to put the links related to
sports at the beginning of the page, how would the user agent know whether
the "Chicago Bulls" link or the "Chicago Cows" links are related to sports?
The semantic information is lost when the HTML is created.

For a personalized web page, information about the category of each link
can be stored in a database.  The links can be ordered according to
whether the link is sports related or not and then the HTML is created.


Are you objecting to personalized web pages?  Are you saying that it is a poor
solution for meeting user needs?

What is your definition of "badly designed"?  I believe a beautifully
graphic personalized web page can be a good design for a large number of
users.  Why should a personalized web page have to accomodate all
users?  The more important issue is that each user gets the information
he wants in the format most easy for him to use.  I think that what
Chuck posted from the CAST web site really makes a lot of sense.

Scott


> Scott,
> 
> Can you please provide a reference to Tim's statement to which you keep
> referring. It seems to me that the statement is not really correct, at least
> in the context here. It is possible to extract sematic inormation from
> properly-coded HTML, since it contains almost nothing but semantic
> information.
> 
> I think you are misunderstanding my point about the web, which is that it is
> not a good solution to meet one group of user's needs by providing a differnt
> presentation and at the same time ignoring the needs of most users. There is
> less conflict in user needs than you seem to be making out. The conflict is
> between user needs and designers who are suficiently obdurate to ignore them
> for the sake of what they think is visually appealing, which is another
> matter entirely.
> 
> I am not arguing against pages that can be presented according to user
> preferences, I am simply arguing that the approach which says it is alright
> to have a page that is badly designed and then have an alternative page for
> some people is not a good approach, and saying itis preferable is to say that
> it is a good idea to keep something which prevents or reduces access. In
> particular where there is a provsion for one group of disabled users biut
> others are then comletely ignored, it does not seem to even be an effective
> approach to accessibility.
> 
> Cheers

Received on Wednesday, 29 December 1999 22:34:40 UTC