TheLen

When discussing web design, it’s hard not to echo Justice Stewart’s famous “I know it when I see it” definition of obscenity. The readings for this week highlight the potential confusion inherent in web design as different monitors, computers, and browsers display websites differently. Ten Reasons to Learn and Use Web Standards is an excellent overview of the logic behind web standards, but I preferred Cohen and Rozenzweig’s discussion of design — primarily because their chapter, “Designing for the History Web”, discusses how web design influences historical arguments and websites.

Rosenzweig and Cohen effectively highlight the dangers of the too much or too little web design, but I would have liked more discussion of the shared qualities of well-constructed sites in the middle ground between extreme usability and aesthetics.

Although history websites do risk losing visitors because of the large blocks of text and complex reasoning central to high-quality historical argument and analysis, Cohen and Rosenzweig’s discussion of Text points out that “good writing produces willing readers, regardless of the medium” and that historians should not compromise their arguments to reach a click-happy reading public — after all, if the argument is interesting enough and the site easy to navigate (see: Putting it All Together), a well-designed and well-argued history website should be able to reach its intended audience.

So, how much simplification is too much? And, can hypretexts correct the danger of simplification? Lastly, how much should a website cater to its intended audience? How well do the image concerns of Ten Reasons to Learn and Use Web Standards apply to historical websites?