writing » net notables
The flash and sexiness of the Web often causes commentators to overlook other areas of the Internet that are in some ways even more useful for getting things done and learning.
USENET, the news group arm of the 'net, is a free-for-all of over 20,000 discussion forums that are at turns lively, profane, informative, and maddening. Here's a roundup of some useful addresses:
The folks at dejanews keep an up-to-date searchable database archive of everything written on USENET, it's the best place to start to find out where the topics you're interested in are being discussed, and to read the actual posts.
For designers, some interesting groups are humanities.design.misc, alt.design.graphics, and alt.design.product, groups whose discussions, for the most part are quite incisive around larger design issues rather than platform specific topics.
For more focussed discourse try groups such as alt.fractal-design.painter, comp.graphics.apps.corel, or comp.graphics.apps.freehand.
Theoretically, these groups stay on topic, but platform jihads break out and name calling and YELLING quite often interrupt the free flow of ideas, but with some sifting, and a pinky poised on the delete key, they can be an invaluable resource.
More polite exchanges take place on the many list-serves available. Users subscribe to these forums, which are usually moderated, and receive the daily posts and queries from a centralized address, in their mailbox.
Those interested in Web design issues can open the page at www2.southwind.net/~miked/mailist.html, which has instructions for subscribing to 6 different groups discussing design and programming issues.
Macromedia Director users can send an E-mail to listserv@uafsysb.uark.edu, with subscribe direct-l in the body of the message to participate in this very busy list. Illustrator users can send an E-mail to listserv@primesource.com with SUB ILLSTRTR@primesource.com your name, in the subject field.
The NiF Elastic Catalogue, from the labs at M.I.T, is taking bold new strides in multimedia interface design.
The old desktop metaphor, with arrows, buttons and simple coloured links is stale, and is due for a shakeup, and with newer technologies such as Netscape's layers functionality, and Java applets, the next year should be very interesting on the Web as designers try and find a new way-finding grammar.
The NiF catalogue uses a Java applet that jams all the text
elements of the site on one page.
The messy overlapped jumble achieves not only the desired function of getting a huge amount of information on one screen but also gives it the grungy layered-type cachet that is so courant. What is interesting about this experiment is it's functionality.
Phrases light up when the mouse passes over them, and a click morphs the whole screen into an entirely different group of options and text blocks, as paragraphs fly out of the mess, and reveal an entirely new set of links.
The content is fairly arcane new media theory from M.I.T's high foreheads, but the presentation is rivetingly kinetic. There are literally hours of exploration avenues from this one page.
< t y p o s p a c e > is also using new online technologies to advantage in this site which celebrates letter-forms and typography.
The opening screen employs Java scripting to define graphical areas; when the mouse travels over these hot spots the text comes into focus and dialogue boxes fly out of the graphics describing the content within the link.
Plenty of forced black space gives these pages a sparse and serious look, and the imaging and layout is very solid.
You'll need a very souped-up browser to enjoy this site as every bell and whistle is employed here, but it's art for art's sake in this laudable look at new ways of using type in on-screen media.
Net Notables appears several times a year in Applied Arts, Canada's premiere graphic design magazine
