Re: Why Mosaic

In article <AACD@cernvm.cern.ch> you write:

|>I'm pretty new to this game of writing www-pages and I have been using
|>Netscape 1.0 as my main browser since I started writing.
|>
|>I saw one of my "netscape-enhanced" www-pages on a Mosaic-browser today and
|>got horrified! It didn't show my work as it was intended.

Suprise!

|>My question is: Why does people use Mosaic when Netscape is better and
|>can be obtained free all over the net?

Because many people are unable to run it on their machines (such as me). And 
others are unable to read Netscapes small text on a dark grey background
(also me).

The question you should ask yourself is why do people use Netscape when Arena
offers far superior layout, including maths and has done for a considerable
time?

|>Do you think that I should limit my layout so that mosaic-users can enjoy
|>my pages as well? This would be a major setback for me because I really
|>enjoy the new features in recent versions of HTML.

It depends what the purpose of the layout is. If you have some idea of
pretty layout then the world can probably survive without it. If the features
are essential to the message you want to convey, such as tables or maths then
using extensions is probably worthwhile.

If you want to have a large degree of control over layout without irritating
people who don't share your views on typography than have a look at the new
release of Arena with style sheets.


The question is whether browser companies are going to head off in the direction
of easy to implement or easy to use. Stylesheets, maths and tables are harder
to implement than background images and centered blinking text. Presentation
based layout is easier to define than structural but tends to date very 
quickly.

--
Phillip M. Hallam-Baker

Not Speaking for anyone else.

Received on Monday, 27 March 1995 10:40:37 UTC