Why This Site Has Almost No Graphics

Several reasons: For more info about the need for sub-second response times, see my book Multimedia and Hypertext: The Internet and Beyond or my short essay on the three main response time limits.

I did have to add a small glyph to the navigation bar to emphasize the meaning of the hierarchy nesting. My original design used a simple colon to separate the levels, but some users thought that the colons indicated alternative choices on the same level (and not a progressively deeper nesting of options, as intended). The arrows seem to be slightly easier to understand as an indication of moving deeper and deeper into the site.
Character-only navbar
Before: use of a colon as hierarchy separator

Navbar with glyph
After: use of an arrow as hierarchy separator