On Sun, 22 May 2005, Timwi wrote:
Geoff Burling wrote:
And the primary problem I have with accessing information from Wikipedia
is not the article length (although a concise well-organized article is
always better than a long discursive one, no matter the amount of detail
contained), but the size & number of images.
What browser are you using?? Firefox (and IIRC Opera) doesn't wait for
all the images to load before it displays the text.
It's an ancient version of Mozilla that I probably compiled
incorrectly when I installed in years ago -- but text/image display
was my point. (And note: because I know it is ancient, I haven't
mentioned any of the problems I have using it with Wikipedia, which have
been many; I wouldn't be surprised if I'm the only one experiencing
them.)
Download times are a very off-putting experience whenever one deals with
the Web, & very few web developers bother to optimize for speed -- or
even consider it a problem. Google is an amazing -- & very rare exception.
(I've had this discussion with a web designer friend several times, who
at least understands this issue -- although he's still a bit hobbled
with the "I want them to see the site how I choose, not how they may want
to choose" attitude.)
And turning images off is not the solution. Much of the time, I want to
see some of the images in an article, such as a map, or specific
photographs of a person or a place; I'm not interested seeing in every
known image with the proper license that could be related to the
subject. Which is why I mentioned commons: not only does it support a
competition for the best images in a given category by allowing a
practically unlimited number of images to be uploaded, it does not
require the losers to be deleted because they are unused -- & allows
them to be available to compete in other categories.
Geoff