Introduction
I thought this unit would be rather easy considering it's about the Internet and I've grown up using computers and chosen web developing as my niche for a design orientated career; however this topic takes a step back from just using the technologies the Internet offers. It instead explains the concepts that drove the WWWs development and evolution. For example, I never considered a web page like a book with choices that allow you to branch off at any point.
This topic sparked some thought when it discusses that hypertext is associative in organising information much like the human brain. Maybe the web is like a person, you can ask it a question and it finds the answers the same way the mind works. It's not the hardware or software doing the thinking though, these are more like the memory banks of the brain. It's your mind searching the information, which is organised by other people.
You could consider the World Wide Web as a World Wide Web of minds. Much like how the Internet is made up of many participating smaller networks connected to each other, maybe the web is the 'Mindnet', or 'Intermind' where the entire World's knowledge is connected into a giant single information source. As more people participate the information grows and is better organised.
Considering the amazing discoveries and creations by intellectual and creative geniuses were done by a signal mind, imagine the possibilities when hundreds, thousands, millions or even billions combined and collaborated on more than just Facebook or Twitter.
What are your thoughts on this? Leave a comment.
Activity One - Show me the HTML! (...and not just a WYSIWYG interface)
This activity looks at Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) and What You See Is What You Get, or WYSIWYG editors. Having experience in web design I found the task rather basic so instead I'm going to discuss a sentence in the description of WYSIWYG editors that I find mis-leading:
...most contemporary designers don't even create HTML code by hand anymore.
Myself and the others I know all code by hand. WYSIWYG is sometimes used when adding content to a site, but I have not encountered a WYSIWYG editor that creates clean cross-browser compatible HTML and CSS for the complexity of a good design. Some very basic designs are fine, but even if the tool manages to generate code that displays correctly across major browsers it is often messy, hard to maintain and may use decrepit practices such as tables for layout.
WYSIWYG editing for just the HTML is an option. But for complex designs you shouldn't let it generate the CSS, and even then unless you're going for a truly semantic mark-up you may use many additional HTML elements which you can't usually add via WYSIWYG. It's also often faster to code it by hand especially thanks to tools like syntax highlighting, search and replace and 'as you type' code suggestions, word completion and correction.
I'm not saying WYSIWYG doesn't have its place. In fact I'm using it to write this blog post and for Web 2.0 it provides fantastic possibilities for content creation and online collaboration. I can admit to using it often as part of my design process, but I can never get totally away from editing my code by hand. There's just too many issues to deal with. What you see is not what you always get. Maybe in the future when there are less browser issues to adhere to I would agree with the above statement in my course work.
Activity Two - Going Way Back...
We take a look back through time at several websites to see how they have changed using the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine provides access to 150 billion archived web pages from 6 months to 13 years ago ("Internet Archive: Wayback Machine").
Again Curtin's own website is an example: Curtin.edu.au
January 1997: The first thing I notice is the design. Compared to today's standard it's horrible! But then again look at my site when I first tried web developing: LukeFranklin.com. You'll be glad to hear I've come along way since then and I didn't call myself a web designer back then.
January 1999: Curtin's website has improved, but the design is still a dinosaur.
January 2002: I thought by now there would be some massive improvement, but in fact the design is worse than the previous one! I do notice some elements of modern web branding such as "Newsbytes" and "click here for help enrolling @ Curtin".
January 2005: What a difference a few years makes. It's still not quite the same as today, but Oasis is there; without that I wouldn't be able study off-campus.
Next we look at Apple.com in October 1996. That's almost 13 years ago, but for a company that makes hardware and software what I found was worse than I expected. I quickly forgave them after seeing an announcement that the GeoPort Telecom Adapter Kit has an update and it can now run at a whopping 28.8 Kbps! I thought my 256 Kbps ADSL connection was slow.
Google.com is on the list too. The earliest date it can be found in the archives is November 1998. The main page only has a header and two links. One to a stable prototype of Google with ONLY 25 million pages in the index. And the other to a more up to date "Might-work-some-of-the-time-prototype" as Google put it. The interface for the original Google search engine is identical to today's version, simple. Who would want to change their winning combination.
Internet Archive: Wayback Machine. Retrieved 28/09/2009, from http://www.archive.org/web/web.php