For a website theory: implementation

Giorgio Buccellati – November 2022, November 2024

Implementation of the theory

The theoretical statement about websites given above is not an end in itself and it has developed all the while the project was taking shape – to a large extent, in effect, theory has followed practice. A major goal of the project is to bring out more clearly this connection between theory and practice.

There is a difference in the way in which the application takes place depending on whether we dela with the primary data from the excavations or bibliographical studies. Here, I will outline briefly the major elements that are in common to both types of websites.

Boundary definition

One aspect that is generally missing in current standard websites is a sense of orientation resulting from a clear perception of the whole: we generally have no sense of the “boundaries,” i. e., of what delimits the material that is being presented. With a printed book, we have an instant physical perception of the whole, which we can then further define by looking at elements like the table of contents and the introduction, or by visually scanning the pages through what has been called inspectional reading. Our websites meet this double challenge in four ways.

Each digital book has an introduction and a conclusion that provide a sense of how the book has been planned and how these plans have clome into fruition (see also above). This is more than a formal device, borrowed from printed books. It proposes the overall point of view from which the books is seen in hte eyes of the author(s), which also how it is proposed to the attention of the readers. As examples, besides this website (see the left hand side bar), one may look at the Critique website.
We make ample use of the side bars, which ensure that the “reader” may have at all times a clear perception of the whole and, at the same time, of the precise place where the current page fits within that whole: as you are reading this, you see the first bar on the left that gives the table of contents for the whole website, with the entry for Cybernetica highlighted to indicate that that is where we are now; you also see the second bar that gives the content of this page, with the entry highlighted for the current paragraph.
Within each paragraph we highlight the keywords that serve as if a title for the paragraph: this is meant to favor the habit of inspectional reading by allowing a quick overview of the paragraphs seen in their linear succession. This device helps in getting a clear overview of the overall content and in seeing the overall flow of the argument, hence of the basic argument that is being presented in this particualr page.
Sections within a page are highlighted (for example, in green on this page) to more distinctly mark the subdivision of the argument into its component parts.

Digital pages

I attribute a special value to the notion of “page.” It is one of the terms that has been borrowed from the world of printed books, unlike other terms like “chapter” or even “book” (which is used not for a website, but only for the analog digital version of a printed book).

Each page exists as a separate file in one of the folders that constitute a website. It is called a “page” because it can be viewed as a unit on the screen, through the use of the scrolling facility. It is thus the only component of a website that is physically, if dynamically, viewed as a whole. The dynamic dimension results from the physical limits of the monitor, which forces a long page to appear in successive visalizaiton as one scrolls down the “page.” Thsi is what would normally correspond to a number of different pages in a printed book: digitally, the whole file is conceived as a single page, rfegardless of its length.

What is important for us that the “page” serves as the building block of the perceptual recognition of the website of which its is a part. In any website, we have a perception of the page even though we cannot have a perception of the website. In a sense, we may say that the page is the embodiment of the website, since that is all we effectively see of any given website.

I will discuss in a separate “page” (!) the types of digital pages that are implemented in our websites.

Browser edition

A digital “page” relates to a website in ways that are different from how a printed page relates to a printed book, primarily because, while the page can be perceived as a whole, the website cannot be so perceived.

the building block of the website, the website as a whole may be viewed in terms of the physical appearance of the final result, and this may best be descirbed as a browser edition.

references
2005 5
2006
2008
2014
2020 Degrees of digitality
2020a Digital narrative