Subj : BACK IN BUSINESS
To   : WAYNE CHIRNSIDE
From : CHARLES ANGELICH
Date : Mon Feb 14 2005 03:28 pm

Hello Wayne - 

--8<--cut 

TW>>> But more and more Web sites are shutting out Dial Up
TW>>> users with al lthe "Fluff" and advertizing. The one that
TW>>> Maddens me is my Local Paper, The San Diego Union
TW>>> Tribune. I have been using the site since it's early days
TW>>> and they have choked it up so much over the years that is
TW>>> is about Unusable with a 56K modem. :-( :-( :-( 

->> What you say about all the 'fluff' is true. You could try
->> LINKS2 or get the addon for FireFox 'adblock'. 

WC> Yeah there are very few sites that annoy me at 49,333
WC> running Mozilla in Linux. 

I was enjoying viewing movie 'trailers' and sampling free MP3s
from novice musicians/groups while using a cable connection.
Now it just takes too long to download multiple megs and I have
stopped doing that. :-\ 

WC> Tom's hardware page no longer annoys and it is pretty bad
WC> in that respect. Currently my worst offender is my own ISP. 

Web designers tend to have cable for themselves and, even
though they _claim_ they test, don't bother to view their
finished work using a dialup connection. They 'estimate'
download times and even when it is not good they then assume
everyone will have cable 'soon'. :-\ 

WC> Type in the URL the for the home page you get redirected to
WC> an advertizement for DSL. Go from the Ad to home next link
WC> is online services, from there you go to usage ( used to be
WC> online hours manager and easy to get to), next you hit the
WC> link offering Q&A usage or usage, click usage. Now the
WC> screen loads Blank so you hit reload and it's STILL blank,
WC> now hit back one URL and the summery of my month's online
WC> usage finally appears. Click details and it says "message
WC> sent to my e-mail address" but that hasn't worked since
WC> it's been _improved_. Oh yeah, left out the login step. 

I try to analyze the various URLs and find a way to bookmark
the exact page(s) I want or at least get closer to the page I
want. :-) 

WC> Oh yeah this is SOOO much better than the old "online hours
WC> manager" right on the old GTE home page before it became
WC> Verizon ISP :-( Add to this they are always moving stuff
WC> around so you burn time just finding it and if you find it
WC> it's often "under construction for improvement" :-( 

WC> Makes you want to just strangle someone. 

Microsoft does this same thing. I think that web-weenies
(webmasters) believe that a static website with few changes to
the layout is 'old fashioned' and that the arrangement and
design must change multiple times each year to appear
new/hip/whatever? 

There are Microsoft support pages I have been too many times
that I cannot find recently even though I believe they are
there somewhere, the question is how to find them _again_? 

I've assisted webmasters who needed to create commercial
websites of 100s of pages and tried to persuade them to be
reasonable about load times and simplify navigation but they
are young and believe they must use everything but the kitchen
sink to impress the customer(s). It is also true that the
customers do make unreasonable demands wanting their website to
look like a beer commercial on TV. 

I would be content with a web browser that could drop a URL
_immediately_ when I hit the 'X' rather than get hung up trying
to download all of the graphics/sound and refuse to 'let go' of
that bandwidth and processor cycles. I have, in frustration,
had to use task manager to KILL the browser rather than wait
out shutting down that 'window'. 

>
>        ,                          ,
>      o/      Charles.Angelich      \o       ,
>     <|                              |>  __o/
>     / >          USA, MI           < \   __\__
 

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