- From: Harry Woodrow <harrry@email.com>
- Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2001 22:19:28 +0800
- To: "Charles McCathieNevile" <charles@w3.org>, "Vadim Plessky" <lucy-ples@mtu-net.ru>
- Cc: "WAI IG" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Well bandwidth may be a problem for some people using non mobile devices. Until last year the Perth Observatory int he hills outside perth about 20 km from the city centre op Perth Western Australia could only get about 5000 baud connections due to the old exchange. The introduction of satelite could have improved this now but as satelite requires an uplink by modem I dont know if it applies anywhere else. Harry WOodrow -----Original Message----- From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Charles McCathieNevile Sent: Wednesday, 26 December 2001 9:57 PM To: Vadim Plessky Cc: WAI IG Subject: Re: Why use a text-based browser? On Wed, 26 Dec 2001, Vadim Plessky wrote: Charles, thanks a lot for clarification! Of course, blind people do not need graphics being send over internet connection, it's just waste of time and bandwidth. My point was that you can always disable images (via menu or via CSS: img { display: none !important } ) when you don't need them. Sure. But that should also disable rendering of the text alternatives, and very often I do need those. Lynx and links and emacs/W3 hhave good ways of getting at the text altternative content, compared to graphical browsers. Now let's think about somebody who has visual disability (say, miopia, in -10..-5 range) and wants to use web. It will be quite logical to use *graphical* browser for a such person, and in addition *to increase font size* for all pages. Absolutely true. For most people it is important to have a graphical capability. Even when I use a text browser, I have it configured to be able to show images if I think I need them. (Again, lynx is the best interface I know of for only showing particular images and at the same time getting good text alternatives). This is getting a bit out of the topic, but... | For some people it is also a restriction of their device, or effectively | required for speed. When I am not able to connect with a line faster than | 9600 baud I tend not to be interested in downloading graphics content. I But does it makes sense to use such lines (9600 baud) nowdays? For example, I use PPP (dial-up), and if I can't connect faster than 19200 (say, at least 28800) - I just make a break, drink a cup of tea (as I prefer tea to cofee :-) and try later. Well, my mobile phone only has connections at 9600 baud. So if I am on a train all day and need to work (this happens to me about 5 days a year) that's as much as I get for now. Also, it is still the case that I get a connection at something very slow on a PPP (which I use a lot) for several days in a row - too long to have a break and try again. (Maybe I just need to increase my coffee capacity <grin/>) WAP: yes, I know also about WAP and mobile phones. But WAP just sucks, it's dead format. I interviewed a lot of people about mobile communication (mostly - General Managers or other top-level managers), and most of them replied that they do not need it [ "I use phone to make calls, that's it"]. I know that this can sound very different from, say, Gartner reports - but I prefer to trust to real-world reports, not to synthetic ones. So, WAP is not excuse here at all. I don't think the issue of whether WAP as a format is any good is the same as the issue of whether people use mobile devices - many people I know use mobile devices to get access for their normal services, and it is slow. I don't think we can force "them" to adopt SVG in any area, but I think it is happening anyway. And other than mobile devices I don't think there is a big bandwidth problem. The other intersting problem is high-latency connections, and that is still only research for people doing space travel planning. cheers Chaals
Received on Wednesday, 26 December 2001 09:19:29 UTC