The Online World by Odd De Presno
4. Some services offer automatic access without any menus or
189 words | Chapter 32
visible prompts at all. Everything happens in a two-way
stream of unintelligent data. The only menus that the user
sees, are those belonging to the program running on his
personal computer.
Some services emphasize colors, graphics and sound. They may
require that users have certain hardware or special add-on cards
in their communications computer. Often, a special communications
program is also needed.
Other services use methods for presenting colors and graphics
already built into their users' computers (and programs).
Colors, graphics and sound are highly desirable in some
applications, like online games and weather forecasts. But even
where it is not important, there will always be many wanting it.
To the professional on a fact-gathering mission, these features
may give slower data transfer and problems when saving text to disk
for later use. Therefore, many prefer ASCII text with no extras.
Sports cars are nice, but for delivering furniture they're
seldom any good. The same applies to the user interfaces. No one is
perfect for all applications.
Level 6: The data transporters
------------------------------
When the online service's host computer is far away, the user often
faces the challenges of:
Reading Tips
Use arrow keys to navigate
Press 'N' for next chapter
Press 'P' for previous chapter