ARTICLE_____________________________________________________ ____________________________________THE TEXT-ONLY ALTERNATIVE The multimedia world of the web seems to be getting wider everyday. Yesterday's eye-candy is today's bread-and-butter and it's almost impossible to remember the limited design constraints of HTML 1.0. But why bother looking back when we have JavaScript and DHTML and Flash plug-ins to keep our eyes focused forward? CHECK OUT OUR ONLINE VERSION AT: http://www.WebSiteJournal.com Today's web site designer who focuses only on implementing the latest and greatest tricks of the trade may be missing the larger picture. Web usage has become increasingly ubiquitous and while this has inspired more users to upgrade their browsers to the likes of Netscape 4.x in order to view the full range of content that the Net has to offer it has in turn created an increased demand for that content regardless of the format. To meet this demand, Web browsing capabilities have been bundled into the latest batch of mobile phones and PDAs. The proliferation of this type of Net access pushes the real boundaries of the web forward even while site designers have to look into the past for ways to meet these new accessibility needs. It used to be that if all you were interested in was reaching the most sophisticated Web audience, you could design your site with as many high-bandwidth plug-ins as your development team could keep up with and ignore the folks running last month's browser. But today's power-users may very well be logging over comparatively slow wireless connections and viewing your site on the tiny text-only screens of the PDAs and cellphones. In fact, thanks to the great strides made in text-to-speech software for the visually impaired, your viewers may not be viewing your site at all but rather listening in as a computer reads the text over a speaker phone while they putter about their offices or wait to board the next plane. The thought of creating a text-only compatible site has never sounded better. Although you can decide to create an entirely separate text-only site sometimes all you need is a simple ALTernative: the ALT attribute was written specifically for non-graphical browsers in order to provide an alternative to displaying images. For example, imagine that you have a graphical link to your site's e-commerce store. A graphical browser will show the GIF while a text-only browser will only display "[IMAGE]". Although the link works in both interfaces "[IMAGE]" is not very informative. By using the ALT attribute with your image link, text-only browsers encountering your GIF will display your attached ALT tag instead of the default "[IMAGE]". It shouldn't be that hard to picture what kind of impact this might have on sales. You might want to look at a good HTML reference guide to find out more about how to use the ALT attribute to label Java applets and make your images accessible for non-graphical browsers. Although few standards exist for the new wave of hyper- minimalistic browsers it's a safe bet that they'll be taking their cues from the most popular text-only browser still used today: Lynx. It renders everything in one monotype font with the only variations being bold and underlines. It will ignore any tags it doesn't understand. Which is actually the good news. While it can't layout frames (it instead lists links pointing to the separate frame reference pages) it can display forms. While making your pages Lynx-compatible will ensure that they can be read by any browser you'll probably want to use some of the features it can't display. But you'll at least want to keep in mind its limitations when designing mission-critical areas of your site. Finally, even if your site can be read by text-only browsers there are some additional considerations for designing your site to be read out loud by text-to-speech browsers. Tables are the worst offenders. A text-to-speech browser reads table information across row by row rendering comparative columnar information almost entirely senseless. Beyond minimizing reliance on tables, you should focus on creating a strong, simple information architecture. Keeping hyperlinks to a minimum makes navigation decisions far easier and increases the likelihood that users will want to continue exploring your site rather than leaving in confused frustration. Using HTML structural elements such as heading tags and lists can also help make sense of an otherwise complex site. Subdividing large pages into smaller individual ones under hierarchical branches can vastly improve information intensive sites making them easier to understand aurally as well as easier to view on the small screens endemic to palm-sized computers. Someday soon the future promises to catch up with the past. Paradoxically, the increased use of Cascading Style Sheets will assist web developers in accommodating text-only browsers by allowing them to separate content from formatting in a way that will provide more fine-tuned platform-specific designs. Until then we'll have to make due the methods outlined above and a little ingenuity. Those of you who still think that designing text-only sites is just for small-time operations might want to consider that Amazon.com seems to have found some small benefit in making its wares as widely accessible as possible. Perhaps there just might be more value to text than meets the eye? Written by Heidi Pollock (heidipollock@netscape.net) <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Quality Web Hosting - No Set Up Fee for Journal Readers! - Reliable: Servers are housed in a class 1 data center. - Fast: Dual OC-3 ** Guaranteed: Money back guarantee. - Daily Traffic Reports: Serious web stats for business. - FrontPage Support from a Microsoft Certified WPP. Click here ---> http://www.valuewebhosting.com/wsj/ <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> TIPS & TRICKS________________________________________________ _________________________________________LABEL YOUR DOWNLOADS As you've probably learned by now, speed or perceived speed on the Web is critical. However, every once in a while your visitors may opt to wait for a large graphic, audio or video clip they may be particularly interested in if they now how long it will take to download. Consider clearly labeling any file available above 50K with the file size, so that your visitors will know exactly what to expect if they decide to download it. METRICS_______________________________________________________ ______________________________________WHO SUPPORTS JAVASCRIPT? So you've spent some time creating those JavaScript rollovers, now you might want to know how many people can actually see them. We took the statistics from our Hitometer and found what versions of JavaScript people support: Version 1.2 59.1% Version 1.3 18.3% Disabled by User 12.6% Version 1.1 5.4% Version 1.0 3.1% Unsupported 1.5%