On 3 Jul 99, den Otter wrote:
[...]
>
> Frankly I've never understood what's so transhuman about making
> minimal use of webpage-enhancing technologies. IMHO, a "perfect"
> webpage is not only fast-loading and informative, but also visually
> pleasing. The design has to enhance the desired emotional impact
> of the text. Transhuman pages should ideally icorporate the latest
> in web technology and artistic design; a boring text-only page
> (some people don't even bother to set a background color) is fit for
> Luddites and Amish, not for technophiles like us.
It looks to me like the www is going through a sort of adolescent fascination with graphics and gadgets. However, an increasing number of designers are learning to use colors and graphics wisely, which is good. I find gratuitous graphics, animations, and especially background music quite annoying on web pages. This is not to say that any of these things can't be used to enhance the presentation, just that they have to fit, not be used just because it's possible.
On a really good page, you don't notice the color scheme and are not distracted by any of the media stuff unless you're specifically thinking about the design. Content rules.