Re: The value of navigability (related to META...)

kevinh@eit.COM (Kevin Hughes)
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Date: Tue, 7 Jun 1994 20:46:02 +0200
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From: kevinh@eit.COM (Kevin Hughes)
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Subject: Re:  The value of navigability (related to META...)
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> From: nicka@mccmedia.com (Nick Arnett/Multimedia Computing Corp.)
> 
> I don't mean to give short shrift to typography, layout, etc.  We should
> all remember that eventually, printing technology gave us the kind of
> quality that was present in illustrated manuscripts, though it was
> centuries in coming.  I understand very well the importance of appearance,
> in part to make documents readable, not just merely attractive.  But today,
> as we invent this new means of communication, navigability is far, far more
> important.

	I agree that navigability is important! But I don't think
that calls for presentation features should be ignored. Certainly
it's possible to make a language that supports adequate design and
layout as well as consistent structure and easily searchable and navigable
information.
	This argument is I think largely due to the Web's lopsided
evolution: if all clients had editors built in from the start
(like the *first* browser on the NeXT), it would have been much easier to
put new structures, meta-information, and navigation tools into
practice, because editors could make it easy for people to
create such things and verify the structure.
	Instead, if you ask people today to support meta-information and
new document structures, a lot of them are going to implement this
manually...by hand. This is the equivalent of writing with a quill pen!
If Mosaic (and other clients) had editing capability, we could all be
in the word-processing age by now.
	I think it's important to continue working on both sides
(presentation and navigation) in respects to the language, but it's
also very important to concentrate on the tools that can write, display,
and navigate through this stuff.

	-- Kevin

--
Kevin Hughes * kevinh@eit.com
Enterprise Integration Technologies Webmaster (http://www.eit.com/)
Hypermedia Industrial Designer * Duty now for the future!