Two ridiculous observations:
On mouthorgan some discussions have erupted over the nature of filters and ratings. It was pointed out that for search engines, ratings on pages might actually be useful to those of us who aren't repressed neophobes by allowing more reasonable searching.
Many of the best newsgroups on the web require a secret incantation, a "dead chicken waved over the message", to post to.
I wonder if there's an opportunity here, one which would let us get better search engines and a self-selecting subset of the WWW at the same time. No concrete ideas, but drop me e-mail if you've got any brainstorming...
I've also been viewing the web image-free for a couple of days. On four of the five machines on which I regularly see a GUI I've upgraded to Netscape 4.05. Unlike previous versions, turning on and off image loading is quite a few clicks, so I've been using the browser with images turned off.
Viewed like this, the web is a dramatically different place. Even on the high speed link at work, the speed difference is noticeable. But it goes beyond pages popping up more quickly. At first if a site was missing images I'd click the button and wait for them to load, but now I'm finding that if a site doesn't have alt tags, it generally doesn't have any content I'm interested in further down.
I feel a little big guilty about not reading ads, I do actually make it a point to try to patronize the organizations that support the commercial web pages I read, and Philip Greenspun's pages don't look quite as pretty (no big deal, 'cause he's got content, but unlike so many sites his pictures really are pretty), but overall I've found I like the look. No more bright graphics telling me I can win free stuff that I don't really care about, or find my "perfect mate", or consume this or that brand name differentiated from its competitors only by ad agency.
Based on this and the feedback I got from the http://www.webstandards.org/ notes, I'm even wondering whether to drop the predetermined HTML colors on Flutterby™!, maybe set up a style sheet, but let more people view it as they've got their browsers configured. Or at least set up some CGI scripts and cookie arrangements so that those who like white backgrounds can choose.
Anyway, I'm finding that image-free browsing is a good way to quickly choose for content, if only to see who cares enough about HTML to put in ALT tags. Worth a try.
Friday, August 21st, 1998 danlyke@flutterby.com