Gimlé

A few interesting links:

A short article on the usability of webpages that scroll vs. webpages that are broken up into small pages. Unsurprisingly the scrolling pages are read faster, look just as good and annoy the users less than the broken up ones.

A designer describes the horrifying effect Flash has on otherwise sensible designers. (Both via Holovaty.com)

Regarding my thoughts on representing names and their translations in markup: The initial instance of the name should probably be in a DFN tag as I mused the other day, but it might be an idea to mark up the subsequent instances in the same document with the CITE tag, as references to the preceding DFN definition. Talking semantics, indeed.

Most of the course’s MA students did alright. It’ll be an interesting lot, judging by their essays. Apparently I’m supposed to be teaching the occasional afternoon at that course with the help of another Interactive Media Phd student called Tom Abba.

The discussion on copyright issues continues. There are a few points and ideas I’d like to write about regarding this subject. When I have time.

Got myself Lev Manovich’s book The Language of New Media, some good stuff there. Some annoying stuff as well, like his misuse (IMO) of terms such as databases. Need to read it more thoroughly but on the face of it qualities such as automation and modularity were a revolutionary part of the printing press, not something unique to New Media. He’s so hung up on databases that he sounds like a Computer Science student in love with SQL.

I’ll probably change my mind on the book on further reading since I’ve only had a cursory glance through it.