Re: WWW Strengths & Weakness
David R. Woolley (drwool@skypoint.com)
Wed, 7 Jun 1995 13:48:43 -0500
Brad Cox says:
>I routinely download entire novels to my laptop to read on the plane,
>preferring this to the usual paperback fare. I regularly read long
>documents from the web, preferring them to paper as a rule.
Okay, let me amend my statement. *Most* people dislike reading long text
documents on a computer screen.
It's always a good idea to take your audience into account. If your
audience is Brad, you'd do well to give him a few megabytes of ASCII. But
as a general rule, people will tend to skim or skip long text documents on
the Web.
Sometimes it's a good idea to give people the option of downloading a
version of a document in, say, Postscript format, so it can be printed and
read offline.