Website and Graphic Design
Website and Graphic Design
This article was first published on October 4, 1998.
A better example of dHTML induced digital discrimination on the NEW Direction site is The ProMac Gallery. This section of the site relies on lots of JavaScript and the complex usage of dHTML, and each page within the gallery uses different effects and techniques. To make these page compatible with Web browsers older than Version 4 would be a nightmare. There are often so many layers that are placed on top of each other and occasionally animated which will work with version 4 browsers but would only be display one after another like paragraphs in older browsers. The only way to display the pictures in The ProMac Gallery, and the other content, and make it look acceptable would be to develop another set of pages.
So NEW Direction has become an oppressor of Digital Discrimination, and we are truly sorry.
When I started writing this short article I thought that it would be appropriate to display an example of dHTML. I thought about adding some sort of graphic that would move around the screen in version 4 browsers and simply be displayed statically in older browsers. Then I thought, "what's the point?" Let's be frank for a moment, does dHTML really offer much? Does dHTML enhance the viewer's ability to use a Web site? Are the effects achievable by using dHTML worth the time and effort of programming and making cross-browser/cross-platform compatible? In most cases I would say no to all of these questions, but dHTML can allow a user to interact more with a Web page and there techniques that can be implemented that aid the navigation of a site, but for the average site that only consists of a few pages dHTML will become a burden to the creator of the site. Most of the effects attainable with dHTML do add to the download time of the page because there is often a lot of additional code to download.
September 7, 2010
