Q: Why is the home page of a professor of computer science so bland in terms of both its appearance and the technology it employs?

A: There are several reasons:

Computer science is NOT graphic design
I have tremendous respect for the visual artists who create stunning web pages on a daily basis. But I have never had a penchant for art and the tools of the graphic designer are not computer science. The confusion here arises because many people are (quite justifiably) unsure about what computer science is.

Bandwith
We still live in a world where many people have limited access to the Internet - a network which seems to have ever increasing traffic. Therefore in order to deliver a page most efficiently it seems prudent to keep the size of the page (in terms of bytes of data transmitted, and, therefore, the network bandwidth required to deliver the page efficiently) to a minimum. This means no unnecessary gifs, jpegs, mpegs, audio files, etc.

Standardization
These days, many a web page relies heavily upon not-quite-standard client-side features for not only a snazzy appearance, but basic site-navigation. I have been truly impressed by some of these sites. However, I prefer an Internet that is functionally accessible by as many people as possible and therefore am hesitant to require users to:

• have special browsers
• run specific operating systems
• risk computer secuirty (see below)
• have plug-ins (see here for examples of the wide array of non-standard features available)
Some of these features, perhaps most-notably Flash, are very useful - I almost wish it were standard. But another problem with such plug-ins, particularly Flash, is that it requires expensive, proprietary software just to create the graphics that are, when all is said and done, mostly icing on the cake.

Computer security
In the interest of computer security, I am loathe to rely on Javascript, ActiveX controls, or other browser features that are particularly insecure. Some browser plug-ins are insecure in subtle ways. For example, a postscript-viewer must execute the postscript code to display the file. Postscript is a powerful language that can instruct the local machine to do unpleasant things such as ... erase all your files. The upshot: I prefer not to require readers of my web pages to use technologies that may put their machines at greater risk than they already are.

Readability vs. development time
Many sites make glorious use of colors, fonts, and other html features. But many of these sites are also really hard to read? Ask yourself, why does the print copy of the New York Times use black text on white pages? Part of it might be economic. But almost surely it is for readability. Reading black on white is easier than most combinations for most people. (You would be surprised as to how many people suffer from some degree of color blindness and find text on some web sites to be invisible.) And as I mentioned, the goal here is to provide maximum accessibility. There are web sites that use colors, fonts, etc. to a great effect that are more readable, more informative, and easier to navigate largely because their use of these effects. However, getting it right is a very time consuming process. For my purposes, it is much easier to aim for consistency, stick to the basics, and get maximum readability in minimum time.

Frames vs. the Back button
Frames offer a powerful way to present a consistent hierarchy of web pages within a common site. I have no objection to using frames, save one: using frames often renders the Back button useless. I like using the Back and Forward buttons in my browser - I can imagine navigating the Web as keeping two stacks (in the literal, computer science sense of the term) marking where I have just been and from where I have retreated. I like the alternative of providing a consistent set of links (see the foot of this page, for example) and still allowing the Back button to work as intended. One reasonable way to manage that is to use server-side scripting to avoid redundancy in your source files (for example, using the PHP include() command).

Server-side features
Server-side features (CGI, PHP, etc.) are not a reason that I prefer "low-technology" web sites. On the contrary, they provide a way to incorporate powerful technologies into web sites while still addressing most of the above-mentioned issues. I am all for server-side features on web pages. The reader does not have to have or do anything special to take advantage of such sites - this is a good thing. Since processing takes place on the server, often less data need be sent to the client - this is also a good thing. The security risks are on the server end - the reader is not at risk (except of course, if the page coerces the user to send insecure password information). The time of development can be a lot, but much of the time spent is doing much more traditional computer programming or database manipulation - which is much more about computer science (and that's what I am about) than using formatting with html, Photoshop, or Flash.