Untitled - witz cultural

'r 54HYPERTEXT 3.0 When users follow links and encounter materials that do not appear to possessa significant relation to the document from which the link pathway originated,they feel confused and resentful. In reading materials on the Web, thedelays encountered by users tend to exaggerate this effect, thus providinganother reason for avoiding time-consuming graphic or other elements wheneverpossible if one wishes to include an audience without high-speed accessto the Internet.System-Cenerated Means of Reader Orientation. Devices of orientation permitreaders (1) to determine their present location, (2) to have some idea ofthat location's relation to other materials, (3) to return to their starting point,and (4) to explore materials not directly linked to those in which theypresently find themselves.The graphic presentation of information embodied in the useful, if limited,desktop metaphor proves an especially effective means of reader orientationin the systems that use them, but World Wide Web browsers, in whichthe risks ofdisorientation are particularlygrave, do not. Ofcourse, the "ShowLocation" window in IE, Firefox, Safari, Netscape, and other HTML browsersdoes provide the exact address of a lexia, and as I write today, following a linkto one student's essay on Patchwork GirI, say, Lars Hubrich's "Stitched ldentity,"would produce the following information in the location window:http: //www. cyberspaceweb. o ry lht I pg llhpatch.html. Such information notonly appears in a form daunting to most readers, it fails to be very helpful ontwo counts: first, the need to create economically brief directory names oftenrenders the file incomprehensible to all but the person who maintains a websiteand, second, it provides very little information about the relation of thisparticular lexia to the information space it inhabits.One way of providing the benefits of graphic presentation of a folderstructure takes the form of fava applets, such as those created by DynamicDiagrams for IBM's website (Figure 13), which generate an animated threedimensionalimage of an individual lexia's location within a file structure.Where such software solutions are not available, authors have employed twosolutions. One involves organizingan entire site according to what is essentiallya folder structure and then making that organization clear. Thus, SusanFarrell's Art-Crimes, a sile containing graffiti from around the world, presentsits information in terms of country, city, and additional collections for eachcity. Of course, this beautiful site, which provides a visual archive, has littleintrinsically hypertextual about it and therefore cannot serve as an examplefor other kinds of webs.