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#10126
The next time you open a Web browser, try this: don’t use your mouse. Use your keyboard to navigate through your favorite site. You may very well find that keyboard navigation is not at all straightforward. On Yahoo.com, for example, you must press the Tab key over 75 times to get to all the options on the home page, and you must press the Tab key 10 times just to get to the main Search frame. Many sites, such as those that extensively use Macromedia Flash, aren’t accessible using the keyboard at all. The problems described here are problems of accessibility. In some cases, relatively minor changes can make the difference between an information design that can be used by anyone and a design that excludes people with certain disabilities – or preferences.
Birge, Colin. EServer (2001). Design>Accessibility>Web Design
#11885
Adaptive Web Sites: An Introduction
Broadly marketed Web sites face an increasingly diverse and demanding audience. Each visitor may be searching for something different, and each may have unique needs or concerns. Traditional, 'static' Web sites can try to serve these diverse users by aiming at generalized types of user. However, generalizing the audience may cause an information designer to overlook users who do not quite fit in a category. A more effective way to reach diverse audiences might be adaptive Web sites that customize content and interface to suit each individual. This paper will discuss basic concepts behind adaptive Web sites using Amazon.com, the Internet bookseller, as an example.
Wei, Carolyn. EServer (2001). Design>Web Design>Adaptive
#10020
Calls for Papers: Technical Communication
The EServer CFP site is a database-driven collection of calls for papers in several fields, including TC.
#10289
Converting Legacy Documents to Hypertext
When I first came to Boeing, my workgroup delivered documents (stored either in Microsoft Word or XyWrite) in hardcopy format. As more modern document delivery options were made available to us, I convinced the customers, development staff and the management to adopt these new technologies to make documentation maintenance and delivery easier. I also converted over 1000 pages of documentation (such as language reference manuals, quick reference guides, installation guides and user guides) from strict text formatting to hypertext. This chapter will share what I learned with you. Here are some guidelines I recommend you follow when you begin to convert your paper-based documents to hypertext. Each guideline will be expounded later in this chapter.
EServer (2001). Design>Information Design>Hypertext
#11891
Converting Science News for the Web
With the Internet emerging as a primary newsgathering source, many traditional media outlets have converted their products for online viewing. This paper explores how two science news magazines, New Scientist and Science News, have approached this challenge. Elements of hyptertext theory are also included.
Carsten, Laura D. EServer (2001). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Scientific Communication
#10036
Designing (for) Ourselves and (for) Others
This presentation, by one of the best-known professors of technical communication in the U.S., traces how readers have been paid increasing attention, especially as they have become more active in text-making, rather than just text-reading. In particular, it talks about the rhetorical roles that readers assume in Web documents, and how those roles contribute to the success or failure of communication.
Coney, Mary B. EServer (2000). Presentations>Rhetoric>Streaming>Audio
#11895
For many Internet users, the full range of Web content is not accessible. This paper gives a quick overview of the subject of Web accessibility and calls for information designers to join the effort of making the web accessible to all users.
Gao, Wei. EServer (2001). Design>Accessibility>Web Design
#11888
Designing Effective Online Press Rooms
Corporate resources available to journalists today are increasingly Web-based. Though most corporations still have human press contacts, journalists are relying more and more on corporations' 'online press rooms' for background information, quotes, photos, and other information. That same information is just as easily accessible to investors and consumers as well. With journalists' increasing reliance on online press rooms, however, come usability issues. Unless sites are kept current, press releases and other information easy to find, and contact names and numbers easily accessible, journalists are apt to simply give up seeking information on a corporation's site and look elsewhere. The following discussion will note the most common problems with online press rooms and will review relevant literature and the problems and suggestions it presents. It will also attempt to offer some prioritized guidelines of its own-involving, among other things, the use of more advanced technology.
Tevenan, Matthew P. EServer (2001). Design>Web Design>Public Relations>Press Releases
#11892
Designing for Multiple Audiences
Current literature tells web designers to determine who their primary users are, then design the website for that group. However, in many cases a website must serve multiple audiences with very different needs. This article explores a few options that web designers have in creating a website that meets the needs of multiple audiences.
Riebeek, Holli. EServer (2001). Design>Information Design>Web Design>Adaptive
#11886
Designing for Overseas Chinese Readers: Some Guidelines
With its economy strong and its telecommunication infrastructure being improved rapidly in recent years, China has seen its Internet users rocketing to 22 million users today from about one million in 1997. A more web-savvy population also prompts government agencies and companies to embrace the Internet. The 'Government On-line' initiative launched in 1998 requires that the percentage of government agencies, either local or national, that establish websites should reach 80% by the end of 2000. Although it is doubtful that the goal has been attained, the country is definitely moving in that direction. At the same time, Chinese companies are rushing to get web sites built in order to promote their products and services.
#10122
This paper discusses some of the founding work in the field of probabalistic mathematics (that of Jakob Bernoulli, the seventeenth-century Swiss scientist). By discussing similarities between Bernoulli's formulation of the mathematics to evaluate the probability of any given event and the forensic (or courtroom) rhetorics which Bernoulli had studied in school, this paper suggests that the foundations of probabilistic mathematics might well be rooted in part in forensic rhetoric. This is important to technical communication because it historicizes the origin of positivism in mathematical technical discourses.
Palmer, Terri. EServer (2001). Presentations>Lectures>Rhetoric>History
#10012
This site publishes papers on a wide range of issues in information architecture, from how to organize a site's structure to how to establish one's position as a webmaster inside a large organization.
EServer (2001). Resources>Web Design
#10128
Emotional Design: Communicating an Experience
Today communicating is not always about a single message but an entire experience. One of the reasons the Web and the Internet has gained in popularity is not only because of its commercialization but because users can dynamically interact with it. Walker Gibson uses the term 'mock reader' to describe when a reader accepts the role within a story that an author has presented. The authors of Web sites, the designers, create an experience that immerses the site visitor or viewer into the Web site. A successful Web site designer has the ability to create a 'mock Web visitor' who becomes completely immersed emotionally in the site the designer has created.
Chinn, Darryl. EServer (2001). Design>Web Design>Visual Rhetoric>Emotions
#24400
EServer Rhetoric and Composition
A collection of resources about writing, argumentation, and organizations related to professional writing.
#13597
Exploring Technical Communication
Exploring Technical Communication is a 30-minute documentary video introducing the profession. It consists of interviews with faculty and students in the University of Washington's Department of Technical Communication and with professionals in the STC.
Garrett, Mick, Paul Foy, Robert Frantzen, Charlie Selk and Erik Willis. EServer (2002). Resources>Multimedia>Video>Documentaries
#11893
The Information Design of Community-Building
What turns a Web space into a virtual community or community network? Sandra Maddox writes an introduction to the subject.
Maddox, Sandra. EServer (2001). Design>Information Design>Community Building
#11897
Internet Privacy: European and American Approaches
Privacy is a concern to all who use the Internet. This article will examine the different approaches that European and American governments have taken toward Internet privacy.
Plantenberg, Sietske. EServer (2001). Articles>TC>Privacy>Civic
#10291
Color motivates, excites, draws attention and provides emphasis. It is one part of the coordinated effort to effectively communicate in information design. Color has long been thought to be only for embellishment or decoration. But if used intelligently, color can help give visual order to complex information. It can attract, enlighten and engage, and thus, add value.
Dowd, Tim. EServer (2001). Design>Graphic Design>Information Design
#11898
Localization: How to Make Your Site Go Round...
Localization is the 'process of altering a program so that it is appropriate for the area in which it is used.' The industry has come to see this issue is relevant to more than just software applications - indeed web sites have the same needs for accessibility via localization. Localization of a web site is done in order to meet the language and cultural needs of a target audience(s). Localization is the key to increasing the universality of the Web.
McDill, Kate. EServer (2001). Design>Language>Localization
#11889
Handheld devices are everywhere. How can you start delivering Web content that can be viewed on these devices? This article discusses the challenges of writing for these devices, what specific issues are involved. Also included in this discussion is a case study of one organization going mobile and the challenges it faces.
Rose, Emma. EServer (2001). Design>Information Design>Wireless Web
#10123
The Marriage of Rhetoric and Pragmatics
The current proliferation of hermeneutic resources with a linguistic base--pragmatics, speech act theory, classical rhetoric theory, Burkean analysis, conversational analysis, Habermasian communicative action--is an embarras de richesse. Surely, at this point, we need, not another theory, but rather an attempt at synthesis, an attempt to turn this hermeneutic plentitude into a single theory. In this paper, we propose to take an initial step in this direction, to attempt to marry pragmatics and rhetoric. But given the theoretical exfoliation that has marked these areas, such a marriage can be managed only by imposing very strict limitations on the scope of our enterprise. We believe, however, that we can take a step in our preferred direction by addressing the more specific problem of whether the theory of Paul Grice, the father of pragmatics, is compatible with the theory of Aristotle, the father of rhetoric. We intend to do so by reconstructing Aritotelian rhetoric as a pragmatics.
Gross, Alan G. EServer (1998). Presentations>Lectures>Streaming>Audio
#13492
The Monaco Group invigorates communication research and practice in commercial and non-profit environments by developing new approaches and new solutions to communication problems.
EServer (2002). Organizations>TC>Online
#10121
On the Razor’s Edge: Languaging, Autopoiesis, and Growing Old
A. L. Becker’s 'modern philology' is an approach to discourse rooted in multifaceted explorations of particular texts: a line from Emerson, a Southeast Asian proverb, a Javanese shadow play. He explains 'autopoiesis' this way: 'One of the tenets of the gaggle of ideas calle ‘autopoiesis’ is that languaging is orientational, mostly. A says something to B -- and no ‘message’ is ‘transmitted’ -- rather what A says orients B (and him/herself, of course). But the orientation of A is not the orientation of B, except to the extent they have the same reactions to prior texts (lingual memories).
Becker, A.L. EServer (1998). Presentations>Lectures>Streaming>Audio
#10013
The Orange Journal is a graduate student journal of Technical Communication. It strives to foster critical thinking and discussion on a wide variety of topics and issues important to technical communicators.
#22478
The Place of the Internet in the History of Publishing
Discusses some critical methodologies we may wish to use in order to make sense of the changes which have occurred in mass media post-1976. It is rather important to understand this history -- the reasons we think the current Internet is confusing is precisely because of the reorganization it represents in the balance of power between ruling interests in our society. In the end, I argue, the Internet is another step in the increasing influence of media and publishing interests, and it is important to read news in online space as part of that history.
Sauer, Geoffrey. EServer (2000). Presentations>Lectures>Publishing>History
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