In Reply to: Re: that is odd posted by Hank on November 09, 2000 at 16:34:55:
: Although I agree that sites that use heavy images are a general nuisance, the images that I've added to the menu are a TOTAL of 11,000 bytes. Even on a 56kbs modem, it should take only two the three seconds TOTAL to load ALL the images, and that's only once while they are held in your local cache. The typical YOUR BILLS page is about 18,000 bytes and loads pretty quickly. So please, don't start lumping me in with sites like MSNBC and the like - it was a change for the better with VERY LITTLE drawback (unless you're on a 2400 baud modem).
I'm not talking about the download time of WG; you're right that the images don't affect that much. I'm pointing out that there are folks out here (like me) who generally keep images turned off, and there are also people using text browsers that can't handle images at all. In such cases, the menu would've been completely useless, which is a Bad Thing since it's really the only way to get around the site. But the alt-text seems to have fixed that problem (though on this machine I still just see empty boxes, with the alt-text in popup labels when I mouse over them). That's all.
BTW, for an example of what I'm griping about, try turning off images and clicking the link below for the BEP's website. Not only is there no navigability, there's almost no content either.