the World Wide Web was slow, but it was faster than it is today. I read an article this morning (19.4.2001) in the Guardian Online section that pointed to a modern website which had the appearance of the good old WWW days. It is a website designed for WAP or palmtop devices and therefore uses low bandwidth pages (text only, maybe one image). Surfing using a land based connection is heavenly because, lets face it, hardly anybody uses WAP, and the server can cope with sending out millions of miniscule 1K text pages.
True, if we didn't have fancy graphics, movies etc. we wouldn't have needed faster connections. :) But if we did want to download high bandwidth data then we would be stuffed because we'd all still be using 9,600bps modems. Fortunately most of us now at least have a 28,800bps modem which makes browsing a lot more pleasant. Downloading movies isn't feasible on a modem, music only just so.
The philosophy behind this website was initially to provide me with an online storage place to put my bookmarks. I know there are hundreds of other sitesthat already do this but they failed to satisfy me because they are online businesses and all had the worst kind of advertising bolted firmly to the front of every page. With this site I have complete control. If I want a feature, I put it in. If I want faster response, I move the server.
Design isn't just about the way things work, but how well they work. It is easy to make a product that boils water. Make it boil in under a minute and you've hit the jackpot. Likewise with the internet, slow pages means annoyed customers. If I make the site free, then no-one can complain, but that is a cop out, besides I rarely accept anything but the best.
Some of you may have noticed that this page is rather dull looking. It is a simulation of how pages looked in 1994, when I first started using the internet and the world wide web. It will also work in Netscape version 1.0 with no problems and probably every browser since. Many sites spend millions on making themselves look colourful and animated, when the message might be just as easily communicated in a simpler, faster more efficient manner.
As the Guardian article correctly points out, WAP wont be simple for long. Colour mobile devices will put more load on the infrastructure until it is eventually unusable
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