On Mon, 23 May 2005, Timwi wrote:
Geoff Burling wrote:
It's an ancient version of Mozilla that I probably compiled
incorrectly when I installed in years ago
In that case, I'm very afraid you have no grounds to complain.
Did I say that *was* the grounds for my original complaint? You asked, I
answered.
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.
[snip]
Some of the Wikipedia skins do that
too and you can happily read away the text as soon as it has been
transferred. Unfortunately, Monobook isn't one of them, because it uses
several CSS files which themselves include yet other CSS files...
For the record, I don't use the Monobook skin.
And turning
images off is not the solution.
I never suggested that. That wouldn't make the text appear any sooner
anyway.
Did I say you had?
I'm not interested in seeing every known
image with the proper
license that could be related to the subject.
Then don't look at them.
So how I am to selectively view images? Last time this question was
raised (for reasons other than viewing convenience), the conclusion
was that this was an all or nothing situation: either every image linked
in a page gets downloaded -- or none do.
Should I start removing images from pages where I feel there are too
many? Or would this be an example of disrupting Wikipedia to prove a
point?
Timwi, I'm not clear where this exchange between us is going. My
original complaint is with contributors who want to insert more
images than I believe are necessary; at the moment I feel this is
an issue best solved by education, rather than policy or programming.
You seem to hear my generalized complaints about Web design philosophy
as attacks on how Wikipedia is designed; if I had specific complaints
about Wikipedia, I'd be filing detailed bug reports in the proper
manner.
If you think I'm picking a fight with you, I'm not; I'm just trying
to express my belief that the average contributor to Wikipedia sometimes
lacks a clear idea what constraints many end users endure when they
view Wikipedia. And this erroneous impression is related to a number
of other issues I have with Web design -- & with the assumptions
software designers far too often make about their intended audience.
I could expound a little about those, too, but it's probably better to
concede the floor to someone else at this point.
Geoff
Geoff