Looking for new blogs? If your interests are varied and want to pop into some different communities, try the Feedster feed of the day [XML]. Yesterday I found the Institute for the Future of the Book’s blog - if:book. I’ve been interested in how hypertext changes the way we read and think, so it’s a fantastic find for me.
Specifically, I’ve been thinking about best practices for footnoting on the web. On the one hand, we have fantastic technology where footnotes no longer need to be at the end of the page. On the other hand, in-line references can be distracting, and there’s a reason why footnotes are at the bottom. They’re disruptive to reading and thinking. However, that’s a really linear perspective, and I’m not at all sure that it’s the way people really think. Organic thinking is something that is usually stamped out at a pretty early age. But, organic thinking is something quite particular to the individual, and organized thought allows each person to assimilate information into their own organic matrix.
If you want to explore a little on how hypertext can change the way you think, check out some annotated versions of T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. (The first is slow to load, but simpler in its approach to annotation). If you know The Wasteland, it’s an incredibly hypertextual work. The web allows you to explore the nuances of the links, references, and allusions that Eliot was so brilliant at creating.
Brandy…
If you want to check out a cool way to implement footnotes on a website, a friend of mine, Chris Dent, has a system on his site called Warp. When you hover your cursor over a link, a pop-up displays information about the link. His site is here. Take a look and see if it is a viable option for you. Chris got a Masters degree in Information Sciences and wrote his thesis on presenting information via the web. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you sent him e-mail to ask after it, either. Hope this helps.
Yes, but it doesn’t print anything. Moreover, sometimes footnotes (or really tangential diatribes) can be really long. Also, you can’t keep your mouse over the cursor. It’s actually not that hard to create text while the mouse hovers over a link. I think for a lot of contexts (i.e., providing brief contextual information) that it would work well.
Now, this doesn’t mean that I don’t like this idea. I like the concept of links being to outside material, and having some other system to sift through inside material. Just haven’t seen any solutions that really grab me.