"[Robot Wisdom home page] HyperTerrorist's Secret Lab for Hypertext Readability Theory Jorn Barger July 1999 (updated Sept 1999) This section of my website is a terrible mess. Boiled down to a sentence, my theory of Web design is "Be as considerate as possible, recognizing that everybody's browser is set differently." If you just want tips on designing your own website, start with my (good and bad) design awards, and this added-value theory, then this older checklist (dating from back when I used the text-only browser 'lynx'), and this longer compilation of ideas. (There's also an even older version of this overview.) There's also very old critiques of three sites: the Yale style manual, a Joyce site, and an AI site. Some model pages that embody hypertext theories: my one-layer Joyce-portal, the site map/tour, a series of author pages (eg Iris Murdoch) that try to integrate all the existing Web resources for each author, a dull page that uses a #-toc at the top to draw people in, my weblog that tries to make it as convenient as possible to keep up with Web news (and the net.literate portal pages where the best of these are sorted and archived), and most recently an ambitious attempt to make Finnegans Wake comprehensible via discreet hypertext theory. From a more theoretical perspective, hypertext research is in a shockingly confused state. Jakob Nielsen offers lots of excellent advice, but mixes in absurd prejudices as well, in particular claiming that many short pages are better than a single long one, a view that a simple poll dramatically disproves. Almost all the web design zines use a maximally obnoxious multipage format. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, has become a wretched drag on its evolution, advocating a boondoggle called XML. My alternative is browsers that do more parsing, especially respecting normal etext conventions. Javascript bookmarklets can do some kinds of parsing, too. For general rightheadedness about design and the Net, I admire Philip Greenspun, Lou Rosenfeld, and Alan Cooper. I have two theoretical/technical pieces on integrating hypertext theory with cognitive science: a 2k intro, and a later 9k approach. My recent theoretical posts to alt.hypertext and comp.human-factors. This timeline of hypertext has been very well received. Web-design pages: main : academia : info-design : adding value : resource-pages : lessons-learned : best-worst : plugging leaks Special topics: surfing-skills : url-hacking : open content : semantics : pagelength : linktext : startpages : bookmarklets : weblogging : colors : autobiographical pages : thumbnail-graphics : web-video : timeline of hypertext Anti-XML/W3C/etc: structure-myth : page-parsing : firstcut-parser : html-history : semantic web Design prototypes: topical portal : dense-content faq : annotated lit : random-access lit-summary : poetry sampler : gossipy history : author-resources : hyperlinked-timeline : horizontal-timeslice : web-dossier Website-resource pages: RobotWisdom.com : Altavista.com : 1911encyclopedia.com : Google.com : IMDb.com : Perseus.org : Salon.com : Yahoo.com Older stuff: design-lab : design-checklist : HyperTerrorist : design-theory : design cog-sci Search this site Search full Web Before you leave this site: Be sure you've checked out Jorn's weblog which offers daily updates on the best of the Web-- news etc, plus new pages on this site. See also the overview of the hundreds of pages of original content offered here, and the offer for a printed version of the site. Hosting provided by instinct.org. Content may be copied under Open Web Content License. "