Costly lesson
I read your article on technology in the classroom (How to learn the hardware way, March 15) with the same kind of despair that I experienced traipsing around the BETT show in Olympia earlier this year. It made me feel like a Dickensian waif staring in the rich family's window watching them tuck into a slap-up meal. The new technologies have a lot to offer the classroom of the future, but the big drawback is that these wonderful devices come at a price.

The raw economic truth is that those of us in the bottom half of our two-tier education system are simply doing our best to keep our heads above water. Year on year our budgets are cut, even though our pupil numbers increase. We are told that all secondary schools have achieved a pupil-computer ratio of at least 8 to 1 and will be at 5 to 1 by 2004; the truth is that we are struggling to hold it at 13 to 1.

I'm afraid the cold reality for many of us at the chalk face bears little resemblance to the brave new world that you describe.
Jeremy Smith
jd.smith@ukonline.co.uk

I was interested to read about the interactive whiteboard (whiteboards replaced blackboards years ago) and that teachers are enthusiastic about it "not least because lessons can be prepared at home (where else?) on the laptop". Would this be the laptop that will cost me more than one-tenth of my annual salary? Government help with hardware is only available for maths teachers of 11 to 14-year-olds.
Victoria Paleit
Southmoor, Oxon

Flash flood
Nick Clayton (Second Sight, March 15) is absolutely right: it's time for the Flash Back(f)lash. To all the Flash animators out there I say this: you know that bit where it says "Skip Intro"? That's where I click, every time. And if there's no "Skip", I just hit the stop button in my browser and go elsewhere. Some of the worst offenders are the biggest companies in the world, and its time to name and shame.

Perhaps the Guardian should feature a regular chart of the biggest time wasters? I nominate Volkswagen, which has a golden opportunity to tell you everything about its cars, but tells you next to nothing.

The Campaign for Pure Text starts here.
Dr Robert McMinn
drbob@jigsaw24.com

Nick Clayton is right to believe that many web designers use Flash to indulge their egos at the expense of usability. But Flash itself is an extremely powerful technology, if frequently misused. It can be used to create very small files that play as they download; Flash movies can scale to fit any screen size or resolution; unlike HTML, Flash will play back more or less consistently whatever the browser or platform; and Flash can be used to create user interfaces that are more intuitive and responsive to use, not just pretentious intros. See the Flash showcase at www.macromedia.com for some excellent examples of Flashed sites.

I would also ask Nick to stop perpetuating the stereotype of the black-clad designer conning naive company directors into parting with cash for "spinning logos" and other gimmicks. Good design is central to usability and has a direct relation to the success or otherwise of commercial websites.

The web appears to be an immature medium because it is full of appalling sites created by companies who treat design as an afterthought, and believe that they themselves (or their IT department) can do a good job of it.
Mark Croxton
mark@croxton.co.uk

I would be the first to agree with Nick Clayton that there are a great many annoying and unnecessary Flash intros to websites.

However, Flash has many more uses than just creating pretty intros. Flash can do anything that can be done in HTML and far more. It can interact with databases, XML files, accept user input and is excellent for creating animated tutorials. As a web developer (no Nick, not all people who create websites are designers), one of the advantages of Flash is that it frees the website authors from having to worry about writing HTML/DHTML that will work in a myriad of different browser types and versions, which, in my experience, is one of the most time-consuming aspects of website authoring.

Also, there are more browsers now that have the Flash plugin than have Javascript enabled which makes it a surer bet for delivering any type of dynamic content.

I would also agree that many websites suffer from a lack of text content which for some sites is a problem. This, however, is not a result of using Flash. There are just as many websites with too many animated Gifs or Java applets, or even just plain images. This is down to the site design, not the tools used or methods in which that design was implemented.

Finally, I would also like to point out that although you can't put a Flash graphic into a search engine, you can't put any other type of graphic directly into a search engine either. Search engine placement is partly driven by the text content of sites, but that's not the only criterion.

I would also have to say that personally I think the web would be a very boring place if all sites entirely consisted of text content.
Mike Annesley
(email address supplied)

Morons.com
I see the blame culture is at it again (Lost stock & two smoking analysts, March 15). The only people that dot.com investors really have to blame is themselves for their sheer stupidity.

Anyone who believes that it is a good thing to buy shares in a company that doesn't (and won't in the near future) make a profit is quite simply a moron. There's a lot of it about it seems.
Colin Millar
nafurahi@totalise.co.uk

Wrong man
I, too, have noticed the iffy service from Telewest (Feedback, March 15) but the deal I am getting disinclines me to protest too much. What does slow the service is the 80% crap emails I get and cannot stop. The world seems to think that, because I am 57, I smoke (I don't), I am overweight (I'm not) and I need Viagra (I don't). How does one set the record straight? Ken Baldry
ken@art-science.com