The Online World resources handbook

The Online World: What is it? http://home.eunet.no/~presno/bok/2.html
Subfile: Internal Medicine; Family Practice;
Nephrology; Infectious Disease; Clinical
Pharmacology; Highlights of General Medicine
You had to take the reference to a library to read a printed copy of the article, though
VRPH VHUYLFHV GLG OHW \RX RUGHU D FRS\ RQOLQH WR EH VHQW \RX E\ snail mail from a
copying service.
Full text searching is now the rule. When you find an article of interest, you can
have the full text displayed on your screen at once (often without accompanying
pictures and tables, though). The search commands are also much simpler and more
powerful.
Just for fun
Many online services focus on your leisure time. They offer reviews and news about
movies, video, music, and sports. There are forums for stamp and coin collectors, travel
maniacs, passionate cooks, wine tasters, and other special interest groups. Besides,
several services are entertaining in themselves.
Large, complex adventure games, where hundreds of users can play simultaneously,
are popular choices. Some people sit glued to the computer screen for hours.
Others prefer 'Chat', a keyboard to keyboard contact phone type of simultaneous
conversation between from two and up to hundreds of persons. It works like a
combination of a social activity and a role playing/strategy/fantasy/skill improving
game.
Shopping is the online equivalent of the traditional mail order business. The
difference is that you can buy while browsing. Some commercial services distribute
colorful catalogues to users to support sales. Some distribute pictures of the merchandise
by modem.
You can buy anything from racer fitness equipment and diamonds to cars. Enter
your credit card number, and the Chevrolet is yours. The online mail order business is
becoming increasingly global.
Level 5: The user interface
Part of the character of all online service providers is the way they interact with the
user. The term "user interface" refers to how the online service is presented to you, in
what form text, pictures and sound appear on your computer.
Most online services offer the first three of these four levels. Some offer more:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Menus for novices (as in Gopher menus), or pages with hyperlinks (as on Web
pages). The user can select (navigate) by pressing a figure, a letter, or clicking on
a word or an icon.
Short menus or lists of commands for the intermediate user. The user knows some
about how the service works, and just wants a short reminder to help navigate.
A short prompt (often just a character, like a "%"), which tells the expert user
where he is in the system right now. Those knowing the service inside out, do not
need reminders about what word or command to enter at this point.
Some services offer automatic and super fast access without any menus or visible
prompts at all. Everything happens in a two way stream of unintelligent data. The
only menus that the user sees, are those belonging to the program running on his
personal computer.
Colors, graphics and sound are highly desirable in some applications, like online games
and weather forecasts. Even where it is not important, there will always be many
wanting it. However, to the professional on a fact gathering mission, such features may
slow down data transfers, and give other problems for the users. Therefore, some prefer
clean text with no extras for such applications.
Sports cars are nice, but for delivering furniture they're seldom any good. The same
applies to user interfaces. No one is best for all applications.
11 of 12 23.11.2009 15:43