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Breaking the Link Workshop: Keeping Out The Wimps
BREAK THE LINK WORKSHOP: KEEPING OUT THE WIMPS
"Break the Link Workshop: Keeping Out the Wimps" is an
eight week distance learning workshop focusing on tools for Internet
interactivity and conducted via e-mail and the World Wide Web (WWW).
New electronic communications technology provides a means for
many more people to be able to access information, introducing
new problems for government agencies. Ordinary citizens can find
out what governments are doing and could potentially cause plans
to be altered. The workshop will introduce the beginner to the basic
concepts of interactivity, making a Web site look great to the
public and upper management without having to reveal dangerous
content. Users can be entertained and amazed while they try and wade
through your site. Special animations and background GIFs can attract
reader's eyes away from the textual content which you can
legitimately claim is there. Using the latest tricks with browser
extensions allows you to fill your home page with the logos of the
award sites, which are colorful as well as helpful in convincing
people your site is good.
Government agencies these days don't have the time to spend with the
many citizens who now can access the Internet. Techniques will be
discussed that allow the most likely large campaign contributors to
use a site while blocking the subjects of entitlement programs.
BACKGROUND
Interactivity is the ability of the Internet user to alter certain
aspects of his or her environment, resulting in amazing
functionality. It is the method of control and contingent response
between user and medium. Some popular terms to describe interactive
systems include multimedia, hypermedia, infotainment and edutainment.
Internet site builders and Web page generators have become increasingly
sophisticated, incorporating "wizards" in order to simplify the work of
authors. These wizards provide templates and other useful functions
that enable authors to produce Web pages with little or no content,
but many glitzy features and large graphics. A large and complex
labyrinth of pages can be readily created, trapping users for hours
while attempting to find information.
JavaScript and VBScript have been introduced to provide scripting
capability for the two most widely used Web browsers, Netscape Navigator
and Microsoft Internet Explorer, respectively. Authors who purchase
stock in Netscape or Microsoft can increase their profits by
requiring users to download the latest version of Netscape Navigator
and Microsoft Internet Explorer, respectively.
Scripts can also be used to program Web servers, as well as browsers, in
order to make content interactive. When they can be used, browser
scripts are usually preferable to server scripts as they cut down on
unnecessary requests to the often heavily taxed Web server. Instead,
the browser is heavily taxed, slowing down users and reducing
requests on the server. Many users are excluded, greatly reducing
load on the server.
With the introduction of the Java language by Sun Microsystems in 1995,
the Internet has become a rapidly evolving means for delivering
interactive content using text, graphics, audio, and video. Java is
quite different from the above mentioned Web server or browser
scripting. It is a programming language.
WORKSHOP CONTENT
The Break the Link Workshop will focus on how to efficiently and
effectively design and use interactive Internet sites. During the
workshop you will learn how to:
* quickly prototype Web pages and complete sites using page generators
and site builders such as Netscape Navigator Gold, Microsoft
FrontPage, NetObjects Fusion, and Adobe PageMill and SiteMill.
These generators provide an automated means to generate sites that
filter access. For example, you will download the FrontPage
tutorial and in moments generate a web page that has graphics that
takes a minute to download, blocks access to people with text
browsers, and uses a background that is stunning, but makes the
text hard to read and encourages people to leave.
* make Web page forms and link them to useful applications such as
databases, key word searches, guest books, and user surveys.
Limiting access to information except through a search form is a
good way to keep out those who might just be browsing, and also
those pesky search engine robots. If users complain that you don't
have any content, you can tell them they are planning to install a
major database system with the latest search engines. [*]
* give Web pages an interactive graphical look with client-side image
maps. This capability of both Navigator and Internet Explorer permits
clicking on different regions of an image in order to link to another
Web page or function.
You will learn how to replace your web page with a single large
image instead of using a set of small icons with alt text that
allow text browsers or modem users to use the page without
waiting.
* make animations. This often entails using an image-file format that
will display multiple frames as the file loads.
Animations are a very good method to slow down users. Techniques
for creating very large (and slow) animations will be discussed.
The movement draws the readers eyes away from the content on the
page, distracting them, annoying them, and encouraging them to
either leave or stare at the animation. On Netscape 2 the
animations add sound effects with disk rattling, and the usual
URLs in the status window are replaced with the flashing animation
GIF URL. Blink is also useful since information disappears half
the time, and speed readers don't see it.
* use frames, HTML 3.2, as well as Netscape and Microsoft extensions, to
customize Web pages. The latter consist of HTML functionality
developed separately by each company that has yet to be officially
accepted as part of the recognized standard. This way you can
select who is allowed to use your pages. Frames, also not part of
the HTML standard (except the HTML4 draft), are a good way
to lock up lots of screen space with your logo, and can even force
people to see your logo while browsing other sites.
* use JavaScript and VBScript to give Web pages interactive
capabilities for users who are willing to download the browser you
choose. Instead of collecting useful information to be added to
your site, you will learn how to entertain users with features
such as personalizing pages with names and e-mail addresses,
displaying current date and time, image-flipping to produce
buttons that highlight, providing colored backgrounds that appear
to fade in from one color to another, and other special effects.
* utilize "push" media. For example, to use Netscape's InBox
Direct and explore new frontiers such as Marimba channels with
Bongo. Instead of using existing non-proprietary push technology
like NNTP news, you can help increase the value of your Netscape
or Marimba stock by locking your agency into licensed servers.
HOW TO SIGN UP
In order to participate in the Break the Link Workshop, it will be
necessary to have the latest Web browsers, the beta version of both
Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer.
First, upgrade your Pentium PC with 64MB of memory and add
additional hard disk space if needed for 800MB of available space.
Then purchase and install Windows-NT 5.2 and the special patch to
keep the OS from crashing on the beta version of Internet
Explorer. [**]
Next install the Maraca push technology, call your site administrator
and have your firewall modified to allow Maraca, and then tune in to
the Break the Link channel for registration info.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The workshop leader, Carl Hage, high school graduate, has
successfully heckled several on-line forums in the past. He has been
actively involved in on-line heckling for more than a decade, and has
been a consultant on government related Internet applications. Though
insignificant in comparison to the PR departments of venture capital
funded Internet startups and hundreds of graphic designers
turned authors, who promote technology at odds with the original
intent of HTML, he has been an advocate for universal accessablity.
He laments the substitution of glitzy but slow graphics for content
and the loss of traditional methods of effective communication and
organization (such as a table of contents). Impatient when it comes
to computers, he would rather be dancing than waiting for Netscape
to boot and WWW pages to download.
-----
* A true story. The local United Way site had graphic-only access
which ironically blocked access to patrons of several organizations
supporting people with disabilities. Their whole site had less than a
page of content. They turned down an offer to help put their (postal
mailed) directory of organizations online because they were planning
on installing a sophisticated database with lots of interactive
applications.
** I was talking with a friend who was excited about the new features
in the latest beta Internet Explorer. However, it turned out that his
computer had been down for a week because IE crashed his system and
it would no longer boot.
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