To use the web as it was originally designed (ie. just download text and images), it works just fine. On web pages with excessive amounts of Java or Flash, it slows down a lot.

I don't see what CSS adds to the web that's so useful. It's not making anything more efficient, and it breaks the model of content independant presentation that made the web useable in the first place.

Firefox is nearly 5 MB, and I don't want to fight with painstakingly downloading it (probably a 1/2 hr to 1 hr download), finding out it assumes some stupid ultra-modern convenience feature, and then trying to de-install it again without mucking up my system.

I could spend several thousand dollars on a new computer; but my past experience tells me that six months later, there would be someone on the web ranting about how there was "no excuse" for not buying the latest and greatest widget X.

If I need to buy new hardware just to view a normal web page (you know, without special video feeds, or holograms, or VRML), well, to me and to the average person, that web page isn't buzzword-compliant: it's just plain broken. --
Ytrew

Actually, what CSS generally adds is faster downloads (CSS markup is generally smaller than HTML markup), and faster rendering (following CSS is generally cheaper than trying to calculate table widths). Most of my webpages dropped in size considerably when I went to the XHTML/CSS paradigm from the HTML4 tables-are-for-layout. That means you could download them faster (if you cared about my pages, I mean ;-}), and you could actually have the new pages displayed (rendered) usually before you could have had the old pages downloaded.

And, actually, CSS creates content-independant presentation that HTML largely lacks. When you use <b> tags, for example, you're saying, "present this content in bold format." But what if I'm visually impaired and using an audible browser? CSS allows the page designer to say "on the screen, make this bold, on a printer, make it italics, and when spoken, surround the text with these words." That, Ytrew, is content-independant presentation.

Other than that, I agree - Firefox can be considered quite large (get a friend who has hi-speed access to download TheOpenCD from http://theopencd.sunsite.dk/, burn it to disk, and then give it to you, assuming you have a CDROM in your $40 computer), and buying a computer to view web pages that are not important to you is crazy.

And, actually, CSS creates content-independant presentation that HTML largely lacks. When you use <b> tags, for example, you're saying, "present this content in bold format." But what if I'm visually impaired and using an audible browser? CSS allows the page designer to say "on the screen, make this bold, on a printer, make it italics, and when spoken, surround the text with these words." That, Ytrew, is content-independant presentation.

Right......... Now, name us a couple of large websites that actually use CSS to do stuff like this. Does Perlmonks use CSS to cater for audio browsers?

Oh, and about blind people - I know quite a lot of them, including an ex-girlfriend. They all use IE to browse webpages, and use their screen reader to hear what's on the screen. Simple webpages is what they prefer, any meaning added to pages using CSS is lost on them. And forms and image maps can drive them to madness.

Actually, what CSS generally adds is faster downloads (CSS markup is generally smaller than HTML markup),

That I doubt. Perhaps you save a couple of bytes of downloaded content (not that that really matters - the ads on the pages take far more bytes than anything else), it does require an extra request. Beside the page, an additional request for the CSS pages has to be made - even if the response is just a 204 - Not Modified.

As for Firefox, I recently installed it, noticed that using the middle mouse button no longer opened the link in a new window, didn't find a setting or another easy way to open a link in a new window and ditched Firefox. I know people get all excited about tabs, but windows are under the control of my window manager, while tabs aren't. And since I can do important window operations (delete for instance, or cycling) with a single keystroke without having the move the mouse, using separate windows is much faster than tabs.

Given that Firefox is a free download, installs quickly, and is a minimal impact on the system...

You consider something that runs under Cygwin/X to be minimal. Riiight. So, you have the overhead of Win32, your own X-server, and then you get to your program. Maybe I'm missing something, but I'll bet that if you compare total resource usage, you'll find that Firefox and Links are going to be comparable.

Being right, does not endow the right to be rude; politeness costs nothing.
Being unknowing, is not the same as being stupid.
Expressing a contrary opinion, whether to the individual or the group, is more often a sign of deeper thought than of cantankerous belligerence.
Do not mistake your goals as the only goals; your opinion as the only opinion; your confidence as correctness. Saying you know better is not the same as explaining you know better.

You mean you don't compile your own cygwin/X Firefox? Avoid native windows programs at all cost!

:)

Who said anything about Microsoft Windows? All I know is that Links runs smoothly on my 32MB (linux) laptop, while Firefox takes about 5 minutes to start up, what with all the swapping. That's running under X-Windows. You don't even need the bloat of X-Windows to run 'links -g' (You can use SVGAlib). I'm probably an exception though, since I use ratpoison as my window manager when I do run X. But still, it shows that you can have a perfectly acceptable web experience using a very lean setup.

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-- All code is 100% tested and functional unless otherwise noted.