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I can thumb through a flipbook of images depicting motion but
I would not argue that a movie is a glorified flipbook. Movies
concentrate the impact. Film is software (the images) and
hardware (the projector). In a similar vein, textware is
exposition with its impact influenced by software elements.
Textware mixes words and software. It is interactive content.
You build ideas with such tools as dropdown menus and radio
buttons, transport your reader between concepts with mouse
clicks, make points using the output of computer programs, and
tune the output of those programs for each reader. Textware takes
shape by spiking Web addresses and software with the traditional
tools of authorship, and your product reflects this
multi-threaded heritage.
If you edit or publish using software as content, you can
incorporate its output – perhaps output from a database
– into your copy. The hyperlinks on your pages interlock
your work with everything else on the Web, meaning your audience
combines your content with their online experience. They can take
fuller control of, and get more involved with, your material.
Your pages serve as points of departure, letting readers explore
new angles and letting them travel the Web for part of the story.
Each new visitor gets to participate directly in building your
Web site, and that adds up to a lot more fun than hitchhiking
across flipbooks.
Here are a few suggestions to get you
thinking about producing the effects you want. When you're ready
to discuss things in detail, let's
talk.
- Make and use an editorial style
sheet to control layout and language usage.
- Magnet content draws readers, brings them back, and keeps
them. Lay a deep, wide base of stable content and build on it.
- Create new Web material rather than repurposing existing,
content until you're certain you know what it takes to Webify
effectively while retaining an author's intent.
- Produce Web content that blends metaphors from computer gaming,
software applications, plain text, video, audio, and other media.
- Read The Visual Display of Quantitative
Information, Envisioning Information, and
Visual Explanations, all by Edward Tufte
(Graphics Press).
- Create each URL to stand alone and make sense independent of
its links into and out of your site.
- Make your links function as parts of speech. Retain the
thematic quality of each URL when editing its content. People
anchor to URLs based on their thematic nature and changing that
theme changes the meaning of what is built around them. For
example, if I anchor on your link because it goes into depth on a
subject I am covering and you then edit that link to a brief
definition or a GIF image, my semantics break.
- Conceive your site as a collection of smaller sites linked
with each other and with the rest of the Web. These sub-sites
must retain meaning when they stand alone so that future sites
can easily include them.
- Build every page so it makes sense without hyperlinking or
graphics.
- Writing software is really about creating new languages and
expressing your ideas in them. Read Structure and
Interpretation of Computer Programs by Harold Abelson,
Gerald Jay Sussman, and Julie Sussman (MIT Press). Write modules
when you write code. Link them through a well-defined set of
interfaces, cluster them under abstractions that mirror their
subject area, and layer these abstractions from the most abstract
to those closest to the machine.
- Exploit the power of software to enhance your content. Use
software so each of your readers can tailor your content and
discover new ideas in your material.
- Take advantage of a Web user's inclination to first pick an
object then perform an action on it. (For example, they might
select an item then order it or find a chapter then read the text.)
- Control the look and feel of your site with cascading style
sheets. This isolates stylistic control at a single point, which
means you only need to edit one file when you want to change all of
your files. Make sure, however, that your content does not depend
on cascading style sheets to work properly or your pages will be
inaccessible on some Web devices.
- Tell your audience who you are and how they can reach you.
- Make content accessible and comprehensible through text-only
browsers, over low-resolution monitors, across low-speed links to
people with poor or no sight and hearing. This does not mean your
content must look the same in every medium; it means the meaning
of your document must survive intact in every medium.
- Use frames only when no other solution takes care of the
problem you want frames to solve. Screens lack the real estate you
need to properly carve them apart usefully.
- Design your content with many internal anchors, even when you
have no current use for them. Someday you will want to link into a
document at a specific location; it is more productive when the
documents are already internally wired with link targets.
- Describe what lies within your markup using content tags (for
example, CITE and STRONG) rather than style tags (like B and I)
that describe how the browser should display that text. Someday you
will want to search your files and retrieve data; it is more
productive to find CITEs than Is.
- Use ALT, HEIGHT, and WIDTH tags for every image so they make
sense when not displayed, and allow fast page loads when
displayed.
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