Clioscope and HTML

I have come across the promo for a workshop on wordsmithing for the World Wide Web

Wednesday September 10/97, 7:30-9:30 pm

http://www.interaccess.org/weavers/panel2.html

Francois will be using the example of Clioscope to discuss authoring dynamic text. The presentation will focus on three areas:

Adequate Redundancy - comforting and surprising readers

Hybrid Audiences - accommodating the varieties of surfers

Contingent Closure - planning for future linking

What on earth did I mean? I had to revisit Clioscope to make sense of the remarks and so doing find myself reading the HTML markup as much as the other words in the source document.

Adequate Redundancy - comforting and surprising readers

E.g. using not quite icons but clues (such as graphic element with a vertical thrust with hyperlinks but without verbal reinforcements -- counting on the browser to "Go to #top on this page") Here's the HTML markup <a href="#top"><img src="clu.gif" border="0"><img src="cllu.gif" border="0"></a>
And this is the graphic which appears to be repeated twice and with its twin "cllu.gif" plays with symmetry (and makes for faster loading in those days of dial-up connections).

Another little bit of decoration was the <HR> element -- here improvised by the heading element (in the days prior to CSS): -- See <h3 align="center">~~~</h3> -- one is almost tempted to reach for a formula and describe this by analogy with the theatre of poverty as the "poverty of typography" which can used judiciously lend a richness.

Hybrid Audiences - accommodating the varieties of surfers

Play with comments <!-- INSERT-COMMENT -->

As in this little bit at the top of "SaPpHiStRy"

<!-- Yup, the boy - boy version is in the comments -->
<!-- A gem in the markup -->

And if you to scroll to the bottom of the source of "SaPpHiStRy" you find some fun use of the comment space in the HTML markup. (Which reminds me of the chat room Bianca's which had comments which characterized viewing the HTML markup as "peeking under the floorboards" of the shack.)

Contingent Closure - planning for future linking

<a name="string">

Using the HTML to create spots that are the target for links or more eloquently put by Ian S. Graham in the HTML 4.0 Sourcebook "Marks the anchored text as a possible specific destination of a hypertext link. The value of "string" identifies this destination." And the hash tag is used to address such fragment identifiers. Fun to play with and very useful mark up. You can deploy fragment identifiers that could be used at some future date by some one intent on a specific spot...

It's a wordsmith thing.

And so for day 959
29.07.2009