So Click, Already

On most issues on which I am not intransigently stubborn, I tend to be astonishingly suggestible. Someone told me this week that the essence of good web site design was that people should not have to scroll down - that, instead, information should be heirarchically arranged on nested pages, because people would rather click than scroll. OK. So I completely revamped my web site. I think all the pages survived the redesign except that I excised a lot of information explaining who I am, because when I started the site in 1996, I was actively looking for work. Now I'm actively running from it. So now you don't have to scroll, despite the fact that I'm doing all this on a brand-new MacBook Pro, which has a feature whereby you can scroll simply by running two fingers down the finger pad, making scrolling really fun. Anyway, sorry about all the scrolling I've made you do over the years.

February 16, 2007 9:44 AM | | Comments (3) |

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3 Comments

There's been a debate about scroll/no scroll for years in the web development community, and each side has its pros and cons (just like the old frame/no frame debate, although frames are now recognized to be largely undesirable for many reasons). Part of the issue used to be that all these PC people had 600x480 screen displays, but nowadays, with most folks having at least a resolution of 1024x768, the scrolling is kept much more manageable in many cases.

FWIW, I never found your sight to have excessive scrolling requirements. And I love the two-finger scroll on my iBook.

If you have any interest at all in interface design, you might want to read "The Humane Interface" by Jef Raskin. It's a fairly short read, and quite fascinating.

Raskin was the inventor of the first Macintosh interface. The book was published in 2000 (I must have read it not long after it came out) so it's probably dated in some respects, but he covers a lot of fundamentals and underlying theory that would still be relevant today.

KG replies: Thanks, Galen. But I don't want to *become* an expert, I just want experts to tell me what to do - while I tell everyone what pitches to use! OK, I'll look for it.

Holy God. I have had this Macbook for like half a year and I never knew you could do that.

Well there goes my Sunday.

KG replies: You sound like the same kind of computer user as me.

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Sites To See

Postclassic Radio! - Kyle Gann's internet radio station that accompanies the blog; see the playlist at kylegann.com

American Mavericks - the Minnesota Public radio program about American music (scripted by Kyle Gann with Tom Voegeli)

Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar - a cornucopia of music, interviews, information by, with, and on hundreds of intriguing composers who are not the Usual Suspects

Iridian Radio - an intelligently mellow new-music station

New Music Box - the premiere site for keeping up with what American composers are doing and thinking

The Rest Is Noise - The fine blog of critic Alex Ross

William Duckworth's Cathedral - the first interactive web composition and home page of a great postminimalist composer

Mikel Rouse's Home Page - the greatest opera composer of my generation

Eve Beglarian's Home Page - great Downtown composer

Just Intonation Network - a meeting place for people interested in alternative tunings

Erling Wold's Web Site - a fine San Francisco composer of deceptively simple-seeming music, and a model web site

The Dane Rudhyar Archive - the complete site for the music, poetry, painting, and ideas of a greatly underrated composer who became America's greatest astrologer

Utopian Turtletop, John Shaw's thoughtful blog about new music and other issues

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by PostClassic published on February 16, 2007 9:44 AM.

The Postclassical Catch-22, Caught in the Act was the previous entry in this blog.

Waxing Octatonic is the next entry in this blog.

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