Re: misuse / abuse of html (was Re: CAPT

At 9:37 PM -0000 7/11/97, Jim Wise wrote:
>Nonsense.  The internet was very widely used from the late seventies on.
>the web as we know it is a recent innovation, and still only accounts
>for a fraction (albeit a large one) of the internet's usage.  At any
>rate, what has caused the massive growth in internet use in the last
>several years is the dropping cost of access.
Wrong.  In many places (particularly universities), the access was
essentially free for the students and professors who choose to use it.  Not
that many did.  There just wasn't much *interest* in the Internet at all.
I choose 1992-1993 as the years that the Internet first *really* caught on,
and 1995-1996 that the web caught on.  And yes, I feel that the suddenly
perceived ease of use that came with the popularization of the web gave
many people the impulse to get connected.

But I think this sort of discussion is kind of pointless in this group.
Suffice it to say that the ease of viewing information under HTML, and
especially of accessing information through HTML (particularly through
Netscape and IE) has led to the visual perception of HTML.  And however
wrong this may be, it is pretty much the easiest way to explain HTML and
the web itself to those wholly unfamiliar with it.  Now, more than ever,
people expect visual content from HTML--because it is essentially the only
universal language of the web.  And because the web is perceived as
graphical, HTML will continue to be used (as wrong as this may be) in a
visual fashion.  It is essentially impossible to avoid.

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[                    Jordan Reiter                     ]
[            mailto:jreiter@mail.slc.edu               ]
[ "You can't just say, 'I don't want to get involved.' ]
[  The universe got you involved."  --Hal Lipset, P.I. ]
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Received on Saturday, 12 July 1997 15:52:42 UTC