File spoon-archives/marxism-news.archive/marxism-news_1998/marxism-news.9803, message 54


Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 14:40:16 -0800 (PST)
From: Tom Condit <tomcondit-AT-igc.apc.org>


oday we launched LabourStart -- a start page for the international 
labour movement -- located at:

http://www.solinet.org/LEE/labourstart.html

The following is the explanation posted to the site about what a 
start page is, and why the labour movement needs one of its 
own.

***


About LabourStart

Remember the first time you connected to the World Wide Web? 
Chances are you landed on the home page of one of two giant 
corporations -- Microsoft or Netscape. Built into their browsers 
are default home pages which tout their corporate products -- 
and their corporate "vision".

If you're like most people, you probably still land on those pages --

http://home.netscape.com or http://home.microsoft.com -- or both -- 
whenever you launch your copy of Netscape  Navigator or 
Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Maybe some of you have advanced a bit and now use some of the 
popular start pages launched by companies like Yahoo! and Excite, 
which offer up current stock market reports, horoscopes, and the 
latest news compiled by mainstream media like MSNBC and CNN.

We think it's time the labour movement had its own start up page, 
one which includes everything a good mainstream page would have, 
plus some things which only a labour page would include.

LabourStart is an attempt to create just such a page.

The page has 5 components: 

1. Labour News - updated daily. The top 3 or 4 stories only.

2. Urgent Action - updated daily. Once again, 3 or 4 key items. 
    Click on these items and you can actually do something without 
    getting up out of your chair.

3. Labour Links - a selection of the very top labour websites which 
    will point you to all the others. There are currently 15 of these,
 
    including 5 national trade union centres in the major English-
    speaking countries, independent labour websites such as 
    Labournet and Cyber Picket Line, and the site of the 
    International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.

4. Net Guide - links to 16 of the most popular, mainstream sites on 
    the Web, including indexes, search engines, news sources and 
    general computer and Internet sites.

5. We wanted to include a powerful search tool and couldn't find a 
    better one than MetaCrawler. This appears on the bottom of the 
    page.

We've also given some thought to the design. The page includes no 
graphics files. It totals only about 6,000 bytes of data, which 
should 
load in about a second or two even on the slowest modem connections. 

And even though we're not using graphics files, the page is colorful, 

and uses tables for that effect.

We wanted a page which would include as much material as possible on 

just one screen without the need for scrolling. That screen is the 
standard small size most people still use -- 640 X 480, so you 
shouldn't 
have to scroll left or right to see anything. We've tested the page 
on both
Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer to see that it 
renders quickly and correctly in both browsers.

We've designed the page in such a way that it includes both dynamic 
and static components. That allows you to save the page to your hard 

disk, meaning it will load even faster. The dynamic components are 
external JavaScript files (you'll need a recent browser, preferably 4.
0 
or above, to see these properly) which will be updated frequently.

Because LabourStart is just beginning, we're very interested in 
hearing what you think. Drop us a line. Thanks.

==========================================


   

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