A Unique Medium

The Flip Side

by Gabe Bokor

While the Web offers some unique opportunities to both those who
surf it in search of information and those who use it as an
inexpensive worldwide medium to spread their particular message, it
also poses some unique challenges. When you print a paper
publication, all of its copies are identical, except maybe some minor
variations due to the tolerances of the printing process. A Web page
doesn’t reach its readers directly, but through their computer
systems, monitors, and browsers. Therefore the appearance of a
Web page depends on the combination of all the hardware and
software, plus the user’s individual settings, which stand between
the HTML code created by the Webmaster and the reader.
Example: If you’re using a browser (Netscape or Microsoft
Internet Explorer) version 2.0, both the title and the text of this
article will appear to you in the browser’s default typestyle (usually
Times Roman). Those using version 3.0 see the title in
Arial/Helvetica and the text in Times Roman. With a version 4.0
browser, the text appears in Palatino or Garamond. The reason for
this is that Netscape and Internet Explorer began to support the
HTML codes for typeface change starting with Version 3.0 and
Cascading Style Sheets (which specify Palatino or Garamond as the
text style for this issue of the Journal) starting with Version 4.0.
These differences often mean more than simple esthetics; for
example, some of Dr. Claff’s articles on Organic Chemical
Nomenclature use Greek letters, which do not appear correctly with
older browsers. The legibility of text may be impaired by excessively
small type size; tables and forms may become misaligned with
excessively large type or low screen resolution.
Webmasters are aware of these problems and test their pages
with different browsers and often with different computer systems.
They also attempt to balance the use of Web wizardry against
compatibility with older browsers and speed of loading. It is,
however, impossible to foresee all the possible combinations of
hardware, software, and individual settings, so Web surfers’
feedback is invaluable in spotting possible problems. Sometimes the
solution to a complaint may be a simple change of user settings,
such as font size, language encoding, or monitor resolution. Other
times browser update is in order. In exceptional cases, if a large
number of readers complain about a feature, the Webmaster may
have to recode the page or even the entire issue.
However, just as we no longer do translations on a typewriter, we
cannot support some very old (in computer terms) systems. Thus,
some features of the Journal are not supported by browsers Version
2.0 or older (which, according to our Survey, very few readers use
anyway), and some niceties may even be lost with Version 3.0.
With the most recent version 4.0 of the encoding language HTML,
the codes of some non-ASCII characters have been changed, and
these new codes are obviously not supported by older browsers.
Fortunately, the old codes, used since Issue #1 of the Journal, still
appear correctly with Version-4.0 browsers, but there is no
assurance that this will still be the case with the next generation of
Netscape and IE.
Please let us know if you encounter any difficulty in reading the
Journal. We may be able to suggest a simple solution to correct the
problem or take your feedback into consideration in planning future
issues. In any case, unless we hear from you, we may not be aware
that anything is amiss.
We want to give you a Journal that is not only interesting and
informative, but also easy to read, pleasant to look at and has all
the relevant information clearly displayed and easily accessible. Your
feedback will help us achieve this goal.

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Last Updated: 12/22/1998 21:38:30