July 21 2018

We have recently added a section on Cruising for Naturalists.

July 11 2018

SMART PHONES, THE INTERNET, AND OUR WEBSITE

We very recently bought our first smartphones in some years and their use has made us aware of some important issues we hadn’t realized.  First, this website and others we have been developing are hard to peruse on smartphones – not because of the limited resolution of the phones, but because of the large amount of scrolling required to read the text.  For example, to read the “About this site” page one needs to swipe about 9 times to read the text.  If the audience is predominantly using smartphones, websites are faced with the need to “dumb-down” the content to reduce the need to swipe endlessly, otherwise the site risks losing the attention of the reader.  Thus, in the Internet age of nearly unlimited information available to all, we see a tendency to simplify content to make it accessible to the largest audience possible.

We are more convinced than ever that effective internet use requires not only larger-screen computers, but ideally large monitors that can be connected to a laptop, for example.  The images on our website are usually 1680 pixels across, and to display these and the text in the information tab at the same time (usually to the right of the image in Google Photos) requires a monitor that can display approximately 2000 or more pixels horizontally.  Browsing the internet requires a relaxed “real estate” on your monitor.  We hope that anyone encountering our website for the first time does not do so on a smart phone, or if so, they return to the website later with a larger monitor to enjoy the experience.