The Oddity Called "Device2"

Why build it in so many pieces? Why not just make it an imagemap? A couple of reasons for that, I guess. At first, I just plain didn't like them. When I surf the web, I keep an eye on the bottom status bar to get an idea of where I'm going. Imagemaps used to negate this, all you'd see is a list of x/y coordinates. Client-side image maps fixed this problem, but not everybody has the correct browser to recognize them. (To be perfectly honest, there's probably bunches of people using browsers that won't recognize these tables, either. Life is rough, I guess.)

One of the very nice things about dealing with your images this way is that you can change different *parts* of the device, and leave the rest alone. I may decide that each node of my site should have a different descriptive graphic in the bottom screen of the device. I can add the new image, but the bulk of the device will still re-load from cache. This saves bandwidth, and increases apparent speed. Let's face it, speed rules. Every second you can shave off your loading time, the better.

The final reason? It's really cool, ain't it? Hah! I love watching all those little pieces drop into place! It's always nice to find something that looks so neat, and works so well. Hmm, I wonder if I could shoe-horn in a Shockwave applet in between the other images? (thinkety-think...;-)

Your pal, -doc-