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. 

kb
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