NONE: Graphics and the Web
Graphics and the Web
Sanford Carr (spcarr_at_nebula.ispace.com)
Wed, 28 Aug 1996 08:23:21 -400
For months I've been following discussions about web site design
decisions - how to use graphics, how much, what kind of text
alternatives to provide, etc. One bit of telling information that's
often been cited by the "Text is King" proponents is that "one-third
of MSIE/Netscape/Mosaic users surf with grpahics off." I always
wondered where this statistic came from, and finally got an answer on
the web-consultants list.
One of the participants quoted the find/svp study of Nov. 1995:
> wasn't available when they got there, while fully one-third of all
> web users indicated they turn their graphics browsers off at least
> some of the time to speed access.
This is hugely different from "one-third of internet users surf with
graphics off". Note the "at least some of the time" phrasing. This
looks like the Yes/No answer to a question like "Do you _ever_ turn
graphics off while surfing" (emphasis mine).
In the "Text is King" interpretation the inference is that there is a
1 in 3 chance that a visitor to my site will arrive with graphics
off. In reality, the survey provides no probability data because it
doesn't specify how frequently people turn off the graphics
capabilities of their browsers. My own experience and that of
others who have analyzed their server logs is that, for our sites,
considerably less than 5% our visitors come in with graphics turned
off or using text-based browsers. This data is current, unlike the
find/svp data, but biased by self-selection (only visitors to our
sites).
I'm not suggesting that text isn't important or that good design
requires 100K or more of graphics pretties. What I am saying is that
people who make design decisions should assume that the vast majority
of their visitors are using graphics capabilities and allocate the
bandwith available to them with that in mind.
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