Karen Walford raised the question of text-only browsers and websites.
Here's my personal response:
When we started Internet Archaeology it was certainly a reasonable
assumption that an appreciable number of people were using lynx or similar
text browsers and I tested the early home pages and journal articles to
make sure that they were still usable, even if with reduced functionality,
by lynx users.
However, a lot of our papers have clickable maps, but used to make
intelligent distribution maps rather than as a slick substitute for
navigation bars and inline links. I've tried hard to steer a course
between inclusivity and maximum use of the new medium. I'll leave Judith
to comment on the new design, which is her baby, but I don't think we've
moved too fast.
Internet Archaeology collects statistics on browser type from registered
users only (so you could claim that the lack of text-only browsers is
because these users have decided not to register, or can't read the cgi
scripts or whatever). Nevertheless, for what its worth I have stats for
November, by which time we had 9,700 registered users, and at that time
the figures are:
Netscape and compatible (eg IE): 9578
Text only browsers (all versions of lynx): 59
The rest (a motley assortment, some of which I don't recognise, but most
of which are graphical browsers based on Mosaic): 124
So there we have it. Given that some users registered in 1996 and will
have upgraded to a graphical browser by now I am afraid that text-only
users of our journal are a numerically minute minority. Whether this gives
us the right to disenfranchise them completely is another matter.
Alan
Alan Vince, Archaeological Consultant, Digital publication, ceramic
analysis, report writing. http://www.postex.demon.co.uk/dar/index.html
Phone: 01522 589992 (Office), 0976 763251 (Mobile)
and
Managing Editor, Internet Archaeology. http://intarch.ac.uk
Phone: 01904 433955 (York)
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