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. ==========================================
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005