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PROBLEMS READING WEBSITES

The Internet is presently in an open source environment where there are published standards but no means of enforcement. Many tools that are used to create web pages do not adhere to a standard in terms of basic html, and web pages have become much more than static pages with browsers requiring many embedded programs and constant updating to maintain compatibility with the complex array of content delivered through a browser. It ranges from plain text to all manner of multimedia in many different forms.

Many software programs that create web pages do not adhere to standards, but no matter what is used to create pages there always exists the possibility of problems: it is a continuous problem. There are many browsers, many versions of those browsers and it is very common for users to consume the same website with no problems again and again. The user upgrades the browser and something in the new version makes it incompatible with that same site. This is very common since browsers go through major upgrades regularly. There is much complexity of content that is served up on the Internet and very complex software used to make this uniformly accessible to all users. Therefore, standardization is presently not possible.

Technology is always on the march, and the quest to digitize data aught to include the preservation of access. Thus we are still at the point where hard copies (e.g., books) are still a more secure means for retaining information for posterity.