Many of you, my fellow surfers, may be saying to yourself,
"Paul, your home page sucks! Where's the graphics?"
I try not to use them. Being a Classical Modernist (get out your textbooks and follow along, kiddies!), I despise the use of ornamentation that refuses to add content.
Image maps do not make data any better, they simply ornament a way a to get to the data. Similarly, fancy animated GIFs do not add content. They simply waste valuable bandwidth. Fancy HTML code, unless it adds directly to the content of a page, should be avoided. Why? Because it's wasteful -- both of the programmer's and the surfer's valuable time.
My guiding principle in making a page is: "How would my page look and behave if viewed with a browser that is capable of displaying nothing but ASCII text." In this way I can focus my attenton on providing useful (albeit niche-related) information, as opposed to eye-candy.
As often happens with a dogmatic idealistic approach to anything, however, lapses do occur. I know that I'm guilty of wasting bandwidth on kitch here and there. However, I hope that I am less guilty than than others.
Comments are always welcome.
Oh, yeah. I also despise Norman Rockwell paintings and furniture that "looks pretty" but is less comfortable or functional than a piece of quarry rubble. The reason for this should be obvious to you by now.