- Editorial Opinion - April 1998 - Editorial Opinion - April 1998There hasn't been any direct feedback on last month's editorial, but we've had some kind comments from a few readers, and have acquired another contributor, Southern Belle. Many thanks to all who have written.
We always welcome your comments whether you agree with us or not.
When we receive a nomination for one of our OnlineAwards, we always check the site out before adding it, and it was on one such occasion that we went off to visit 'beeb.com', the fun site of our very own publicly-funded Auntie BBC, that bastion of impartiality and icon of broadcasting excellence.
Oh dear - we were refused access!
"Hard luck sir! - Go and get a copy of NetsCrape® or Mega$loth® Internet Exploder with the bells and whistles or you can't come in."
"But is this not the British Broadcasting Corporation? Aren't you supposed to be impartial. Are you really allowed to promote American products?"
This is seriously wrong. We pay our TV licence fee and we feel we are entitled to view and listen to whatever we wish. They don't tell us whose radio or TV we have to buy, just that it has to be 'compatible' with the frequencies and internationally agreed standards they use.
Not so with our dear Auntie Beeb on the Web. Nosirree! You gotta use a particular brand of browser. No deference to international standards here boy. Bill Gates rules OK!
Not according to Phundria.
Sorry Beeb - you've blown your integrity and impartiality out of the water!
To be fair, our researches have revealed that 'beeb.com' is actually part of the commercial side of the BBC, and is not directly funded by the licence fee. Even so, many items in it are linked to various radio and TV programmes, often while they are 'on the air', as well as to the main BBC website, so we feel we must stand by what we've said above.
The 'bbc.co.uk' website is also a great disappointment. Let us simply quote one of our English correspondents (edited):
'bbc.co.uk' forbids a lot of people from visiting it anyway - not through explicit banning/checking scripts, but through sheer download time. This site is plastered with images - dramatically slowing down download time, and even the cryptic 'alt' texts they provide for each image are unreadable due to massive overcrowding. Besides they should by rights have invested in a proper low-bandwidth version! Even with images turned off the homepage (or rather, the page you get redirected to from the homepage) takes an age to appear - mainly due to crowded design... God knows how bad it is for the poor bloke with his 14k modem!!
Whooooh - just visited the 'on-line games/toys' bit: Looks like you need plug-ins to play these. Well - that eliminates a fair number of the Mac users, and all of the Unix, Acorn and Amiga users out there. Of course these could have been written in Java - then at least they would have addressed a larger audience (although not 100%)
And while you're there check out the weather site - pointless use of a CPU hogging Java applet and very bad navigation ... I suppose the Beeb assumes everyone is browsing with the latest Pentiums ...?
It appears Auntie has fallen foul of the most common corporate web crime - make it cute. To hell with the download times, who cares if parts are off limits to non-Wintel users. Why bother with a low-bandwidth version for those surfing-on-a-budget??? .... Plaster the thing in unnecessary graphics ... force HTML to do things it wasn't designed to (and therefore make the page break on most browsers) but above all MAKE IT LOOK PRETTY!!!!
Oh well, 'bbc.co.uk' used to be a good site, when it was mainly content and not presentation.... someday they may realise...
We couldn't have put it better than that.
If you know of any other particularly inaccessible pages, please be sure to nominate them for an OnlineAward or a Custard Pie.
There's a deal of disinformation going the rounds that our schools need to re-equip themselves (at great expense) with new Windows95 PCs in order to get access to the Internet and the World Wide Web.
This is quite untrue.
The truth is that any 386 or better PC is capable of using at least one of the graphical browsers available (Opera), and even earlier DOS computers can use 'Lynx', a text browser with graphics capability.
As far as other school computers go, most System 7 Macintoshes and all Acorns with RISC OS 3.10 (1992) upwards, and sufficient memory can run the latest versions of their native browsers.
It is possible that some earlier machines of all types may require a serial port upgrade.
Schools need not pay any Windows Tax. There's a huge waste of public money on the cards here if we don't watch out.
It would be much better if those who are upgrading from a suitable computer would donate it to their local school.
This month we welcome (really?) the Mega$loth® 'Insistents', a contribution from Southern Belle. Ever wondered about 'featured creepies'? These are the odd little creatures that pop up on your computer screen at the most inconvenient times, with distracting and often pointless advice.
We've also added some more OnlineAwards Nominations.
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