Layout a stub

Explanation
Exploration
Exercise
Experiment: On Your Own
Exchange: Share Your Creations

Explanation

Where book layouts have been the same for about two hundred years (with small variations in fonts, paper, and printing), electronic literature layouts differ drastically.

The layout of an electronic work depends a great deal on the tools used and the prevailing styles of the time. These tools have evolved rapidly, and styles have changed quickly--about every couple of years. Works before the early-2000s were constrained by tools to a much greater extent than tools after that. The web, for example, was originally designed simply to convey scientific papers--so bold, italics and horizontal rules. Web designers were delighted with blinking text, flashing lights and the idea that you could put a graphic in as a background. Web designs settled down after creators thought a bit about usability. But web works relied on tables for layout before CSS styles. There have been many drastic changes in styles in a relatively short period. Considerations for layout include:

• Page structure. Layouts of pages reserve space for navigation and "windows" for content. The now traditional layout puts the navigation bar on the left or on top, with one or more windows for content in the middle. Pages that scroll traditionally repeat the main menu options at the bottom of the page. If you want readers to focus on content, use this set up. If you want readers to hunt for the links or content, use another layout.
  
• Color. Colors affect the readers' moods and interpretations of the piece.


• Fonts. Fonts not only create a sense of the piece, they ensure its readability.
  
• Link markings. Links may be called out by either font or color. The traditional web layout uses blue underlining for non-visited links and purple for visited links. If you want readers to focus more on your links than your content, use another scheme.

Be consistent throughout your piece. Keeping the same font, color, link markings, and page structure throughout a piece shows that the piece belongs together. Without this continuity, readers will be lost--especially if your work is on the web. Readers are now used to clicking on a link and ending up on someone else's page. (Imagine readers, like flying fish, jumping in an out of books at a library--you can see the confusion that this would create!). The layout for Fun da mentals is simple, but consistent. I kept the layout of Fun da mentals simple as I wanted my layout to fade into the reader's mind--not to stand out and get in the way of reading the content. In other pieces, the layout itself can be more noticeable than the content.

Layout also affects the mood and energy of the piece. Complex layouts present the readers with many choices of where to look and what to follow. This can convey a sense of richness--or confusion, depending on how the layout is built.

Remember that users can set their own browser styles to default styles in web browsers, and that your pages will look different on every reader's screen. So read your web piece using different browsers (including older ones) and default styles.

Exploration

• Rob Wittig's Fall of the House of Marcia is a clever parody that depends on mimicking the styles of the mid to late 90s web pages. In the late 1990s, there were only a handful of web sitesdevoted to any one subject. So people developed web-rings, which were basically links to web sites dealing with that subject. Nodes were long and images were above the text as it was difficult to place images and text together (tables were the only way to do it). Luckily, some of these web sites have been archived. Look at an acrchivedl 1998 angel web site and an active angel web site (as of 2008) and compare these with Wittig's. How does Wittig's parody satirize this style of web sites? What does the design of the web site say about Marcia? How would you describe her character? Is this different from the "real" web sites that Wittig is parodying?

Exercise:

Experiment: On Your Own

Solitaire

Team sports

Exchange: Share Your Creations

Share your work in person

Share your work online

• Create a video
• Take a picture
• Render your creation to be read on a computer (use any tool you can).