The Disappearance of the Dynamic Web Page
Nov. 17, 2010
The first rule of good web page design reflected in many instructional
documents was to make table sizes relative. Since screen sizes varied,
setting a table width to a percentage of the screen size was more dynamic
than setting the table width to a static dimension of pixels or points.
I noticed a lot of people who had to read through a lot of documents would
reduce the page width so they could scan the text faster. I took a speed
reading class once and that's how we did it. With a fixed width we could
read down a column of text faster. A page width of five or ten words could
be scanned faster than a page fifteen or twenty words words wide. I
noticed I dropped my concentration in the middle of a wider page and I
assume this is why other people prefer to resize their page width when
reading. In this information age we want to utilize all the advantages
possible to process increased volumes of information.
Then along came the government. The government exercises control. The pdf
format seems to exercise that control. I first noticed it downloading tax
forms. They were all in the postscript data format (pdf). That made sense
if an office was processing lots of forms. Uniformity would allow an
agency to process more forms methodically. However I noticed the habit of
using the pdf format was creeping into other government agencies where the
information was for purely dissemination purposes. The reader was forced
to a standard width via the pdf format even when it didn't seem necessary.
Thereby speed reading was nullified with the forced wider page.
Years later I was surprised to see some educational institutions
demonstrate a preference for the pdf format. Here we were in an age of
unprecedented information, and these information dissenters were taking a
step backward to the pdf format in the interest of control of their
information.
Now we're seeing forced formats in script form as schemas and style sheets
replace HTML. The crafters who use a template often have to add extra code
or instructions, when writing a web page, in order to allow dynamic
layout.
It's a matter of control verses non control. The developers of HTML were
brilliant. We were stepping out of a text only age, when most of our
information was distributed as text. Text processing with links and a few
images was all you needed to communicate with fellow researches. Now the
open minded are remiss if they don't allow avenues for video, audio and
social networking.
HTML is passe, but with its demise, layout control was passed on to the
institutions. So what else is new. The rich get richer and the more
powerful get more powerful through control. The loss of dynamic web page
content is one of the finer points of control that many of us may have
missed while we tried to set ourselves up to befriend somebody.
