About our Web Site

I thought the Web was supposed to be a visual medium — how come you've got all this text and no pictures?

This is one of the great fallacies of our time. Web pages are inherently no more visual than sheets of paper. Certainly, the fact that a computer screen isn't as flexible as a book means that a lot of different design decisions are required, but the primary issues are the nature of the information to be conveyed and the kind of cognitive processes the reader / viewer has to perform.

Then, of course, there's the performance angle: graphics can slow things down no end, and we don't want you (or any of our readers) getting impatient and frustrated!

Most of all, though, Brandle's web site is predominantly textual simply because that's the business we are in, it's where our expertise lies, and it's the kind of stuff we want to publish. (We hope it's also the kind of stuff you want to read — at least some of the time.)

Why don't you use modern features like frames and Active Components?

We have sometimes built such features into in-house web-based material designed for clients. With in-house webs (in "intranet" environments), we know exactly what browser will be used to view the material, so we know what will and won't work.

When we publish on the public web, we don't have that certainty. So we take the view that readers shouldn't be disadvantaged if they still have early-model browser software — or hardware: we try to allow for 640 x 480 screens. (A lot of our readers are university students, and we all know how short of money they are!)

That said, we are in the process of designing an alternative presentation, so that you can choose a basic or "enhanced" view.