I cant let this pass. You are totally missing the point.
Ordinary users, which is what the digital divide is about - not the techies or the faddists who have time to twiddle and experiment with things - just want a tool that works.
If a user Netscape 4 goes to a web page that doesn't display properly, they go away and don't come back. It is as unacceptable as people who say things like ' ... this web page is best viewed with screen resolution xxxx by xxxx ... ''
The digital divide is about users being able to USE their equipiment in the circumstances they exist in.
Equally bad are the web designers who wont accept that like it or not the default setting in IE is usually text size 'smaller;. Most users never change this. The web designers who then set their font size to look 'normal' with the 'medium' setting are actually alienating 99% of IE visitors. I don't bother with sites who do this. It doesn't matter that I know how to change the text size. I boycott them on the basis that they don't care about catering for their potential audience.
The technology is the tool, this obsession with bling technology is getting me down.
How is any of this tackling the digital divide?
As some one who works with groups who are 'making do' in an inner city borough this is just what alienates them from the technology. Not that they're techno-phobic, or uneducated, but the culture of the techno messengers makes them walk away ...
JW
At 02:37 22/04/2005, Todd Seal wrote:
Jayne Cravens said...
... I wrote tech support and their reply: use a different machine with a higher version of MS Explorer or NetScape. So, I certainly won't be recommending blogger.com to anyone.
... turning off the style sheets in your browser and separating content from design are not mutually exclusive, in fact they depend on each other.
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