Get thee back to MyFace, kid. And here's the answer ...
Every fancy graphic, every nifty animated trick, and every "OMG-ponies, AWEsommmme!" background song on a web page just adds to the time your machine takes to get and show it to you, whether a little or a lot. Mind you, every letter and other character on the page does, too, but I find a lot of usefulness and entertainment in the written and spoken words :) . Even then, I started to put this fun and educational mini-rant on the main page, then moved it out here to its own page to save time and annoyance for people who didn't seek this out. And while an empty page is the fastest to load, it is also the most pointless outside of Web-Zen mastery.
So it's about deciding what the point of my page is, and I get to do that. ... As far as the A/V.e. and c.l. go, there are a lot of technologies and tricks available now that can not be handled by older or very-older browsers and computers, including -- GASP! -- dumb terminals connected over a dial-up modem and unable to play a sound other than >beep< or display ("Awww, there there, children, don't cry, little programmer...") g-r-a-p-h-i-c-s, I mean, pictures. And I choose not to discriminate against them; the people with those techs deserve my web page and attention, too. So on the main page and this one, I'm keeping it simple, for you, my humble reader. Or for that gal, way over there out of your site[sic], about whom, apparently, some people don't care, just because she's a minority. A tech minority. Some people -- you know, the ones who can't believe you don't have cable or satellite TV or a touch-tone phone; don't understand why anyone would have a tape, or a record, or a "What's an 8-track?!?", or a tape reel; think that a land-line is a dinosaurian waste of resources or something painted on the ground ("Y'mean, like, road stripes?" *giggle, head bob*) and a cell phone is really meant for better things than talking to people; figure that "Leet" is efficient and/or cool, and therefor ought to be used for writing school reports and entire novels (if they even read for fun); reel at the notion, poor sods, of watching their SpongeBob in anything less than the highest High-Def, as if they couldn't get anything out of it otherwise (and next week it'll be on holocron, which will likewise be indispensible); >pant, pant, pant< ; won't even send an e-mail anymore since "Everybody's on SpaceBook, right?" and would rather "SpaceBook or Fweet you" from across the same room than turn their head 50 degrees to speak and it's not their fault if you're not logged in right then 'cuz of course you are >lolz< -- these "some people" ... just don't care. They're snobs, or they're a business honestly and unapologetically catering to the largest market segments, or they're taking too much for granted, or something else.
Now the one thing you can't do is get me wrong here: the tech that I mention above is great, all of it, older and newer alike, useful for various purposes and different peoples' needs -- even entertainment is a legitimate, and fantastic, use! It's just people who are intolerant or disbelieving of others who aren't on their particular tech bandwagon that get my goat to varying degrees. And web sites that absolutely require Flash (or whatever) but could provide info another way, too, they can be frustrating at those moments when I happen to be stranded at a computer that doesn't-and-can't have Flash (or whatever), like work or grandma's. Or web sites that take forever to load because of huge graphics/Flash/movies/sound/blah-blah-yada at that moment that I *J*U*S*T* want to know the address or start time, dammit, *Waaaaah* -- those frustrate me, too, I admit it. But then, it's not the tech; it's the way some people use it and their functional assumptions about others.
But I'm not one of them. I care about "that gal" (see several sentences back), I do. And I don't need anything here that she can't handle, for what I really want to get across. I do have some things available that won't display or play on, say, a character-only display or no-sound computer, and no ASCII-art alternatives, but sharing those specific things is the point of sharing those specific things, they aren't incidental, they don't interfere with anything else, and they're not on that main page or this one (as I write this, anyway).
Again, friends, You're Welcome. I hope this page was illuminating, educational, even. I hope it was such that your outlook on life is left in sync with mine.
But even if it wasn't, at least you could view it, and it didn't take long to load. :) <.p>