April 22 Readings

Mariann Daniel
April 22 Readings.

I checked out all of the websites here, and they all seem to be interesting. A couple of them would not open up for me such as RICE--but I liked the other ones. I specifically liked Random Paths. Besides from its obvious beauty of it, with all of is pictures, I liked the diction and the way the new pages came up. It seems to be using a cycle system. It is just one straight line as opposed to In the Changing Room for instance that makes it impossible to explore only one angle at a time.
In the Changing Room is a convoluted story line of eight different people and their jouney through a specific instance in life. The changing story line was remenicent of Twelve Blue and the changing view points and very confusing story line there. Random Paths was very straight forward with its story line: a man visiting Rome—following his shadow.
Random Paths also did something I was very fond of. When I fist clicked on the text it opened up a page of pictures. These pictures change when you mouse is clided over them. I really liked how that was done, and if I know anything advanced about graphics, I would try to do something like that.
In Hypertext Gardens, I enjoyed the seven tips for gardening. They make sense to an average reader. Hypertext Gardens itself is a helpful tool for understanding what is going on in the Hypertext world and how you can make your website better by undestanding it. Random Paths does not do this, however, the very nature of the two websites are totally different. The navigation of Hyptertext Gardens seems pretty simple with only about one link per page allowing the creater to guide the reader through.
Overall, even though Random Paths is a simple site with simple navigation, its graphics completely make up for it. Yes, pages like Hypertext Gardens offer more information, but the purpose and audience are different for both sites.