A respondent who accesses the Penn Web more than once a day and has developed Web pages is a heavy user. A respondent who accesses the Web more than once a day, once a day, or several times a week and has no Web development experience is a moderate user. A respondent who accesses the Web a few times a month or less and has no Web development experience is a light user. More connection types are used in 1998, including commercial ISPs and other high-speed connections. Among external respondents, modem use predominates.
Experience creating Web pages is widespread among respondents.
There was but little alteration in the order of preference of these features from 1996. The most noteworthy change is that readability with a text-only browser is now rated least important, even behind video capabilities. Among Penn affiliates, faculty were much less interested in graphical richness or media capabilities than any other group, but, paradoxically, were least concerned about readability with a text-only browser. No important variations from the mean were seen among affiliate groups. The search input field on the home page is not heavily used.