On Sat, Jan 25, 2003 at 12:38:35AM -0500, Michael Vang wrote: > Well, to be honest, not much more can be done... As it is now, we have > several mechanisms in place to enable people with dialup access the > ability to log on and get done right quick... > > 1) There are no heavy graphics usage... (If I were paying for access I'd > have graphics turned off anyways!) > 2) Everything is GZIP compressed... > 3) You can have email notifications of new posts...
Still, you can't do what you can do with e-mail or a newsgroup, namely: a) Log on, download all new posts, log off. b) Sit logged off, take your time to read all new e-mail (in a form _you_ choose -- if you don't like the forum interface, you can't change it, but you're free to select whatever mail-/newsreader you want). No delays to read a new message, proper text editing functions if you want it, etc.. c) Log on, upload your answers, log off. In short, the very concept of a web forum (where you have to do everything via the web, rather than using a dedicated application for it) just isn't that appealing to most people who have used e-mail or news for a while. The fact that most forums are extremely poorly designed userfriendliness-wise (note that I'm not very familiar to the GIMPS forums, so don't take this as a critique of the GIMPS forums in particular) doesn't help, either. :-) /* Steinar */ -- Homepage: http://www.sesse.net/ _________________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
