Matthew Burnside
--------
Review #1
one o'clock at the Colosseum
http://web.mit.edu/21w765j/Spring98/p1/jeffreys/
Well, for a start, the opening page with at least five different fonts and four different colors is painful to look at. (It could be worse -- at least the colors sort of go together). It could easily be cleaned up by simply reducing the number of fonts and colors. Also, because of all the colors, when I look at it, I'm confused as to what is a link, and what is simply colored text. A minute or two of playing, however, reveals that the 'bright' blue is a link, whereas the navy blue is simply text. Not at all intuitive.
But let's continue on the tour by following Erik and Rob. (click on 'It's time for me to meet Erik and go.')
http://web.mit.edu/21w765j/Spring98/p2/final2/colosseum/rob1.html
Now that we are into the story a little bit more, things start to clean up. With black text, and blue links, it is now always clear which text is a link, and which text is not. (This change of font/link color from the opening page is kind of confusing though.) The page layout, is definitely much better than the opening page. This page does not appear nearly as cluttered. But let's move on.
Click on 'it seems Erik has had just about enough of the Acropolis' and go to:
http://web.mit.edu/21w765j/Spring98/p2/final2/colosseum/erik1.html
Again we see similar page layout, but the neat thing here is that the background color of each web page indicates who is writing the current page. So, for example, on
http://web.mit.edu/21w765j/Spring98/p2/final2/colosseum/rob1.html
(where we just were) the background is yellow, indicating Rob is writing the current journal entry. However, on the current page, the background is blue, representing Erik, and so on, with green representing Leigh, and pink representing Sabrina. I think this is pretty neat, and a good way to prevent confusion, however it is pretty subtle. Perhaps making all links to Erik blue, all to Rob yellow, etc. would make this a little more obvious. In addition, there is no correlation between the colors of the individuals and the colors of their paths on the map as we path through the narrative. Changing this could assist users in making heads or tails of what is going on.
This narrative is interesting, however toward the end, it appears to degenerate into a 'Choose your own Adventure', only without actually having a 'choice' involved (i.e. the choices you make have no effect on the outcome, that I could tell.)
I have rewritten this html in an attempt to clean the page up. I have duplicated the opening page, and the the two pages of depth one. To view my rewrite, go to:
http://www.mit.edu/~event/21W.765J
What you will notice in my rewrite is that the colors are now far more consistent (including in the maps). In addition, I have changed the formatting in order to make the pages a little more pleasing to the eye.
------------------------------
Review #2
The Lives and Deaths of Mrs. Curtis
This is a really neat project! I find that the web pages which interest me the most are those which demonstrate clear attention to detail. and this is one of them. From the start, the pages themselves assist in the story. The pastel green links, the blue font, and the pale blue and white wallpaper background all exude the atmosphere of the house of an old woman.
Most interestingly, even though most projects choose to organize themselves in the form of a web, this project does not do this. It is almost linear (through the 'The Lives of Mrs. Curtis' portion) until the second half, at which point it becomes only somewhat less linear. You again must follow the same path that you followed through the 'Lives' portion, but now you can click on objects to learn about Mrs. Curtis' memories about them, and those memories help to explain the story. The best part is that the memory web pages have a dark blue background with white text, (like the blue and white polka-dots that Mrs. Curtis loves so much) to remind us that we are reading about a memory, rather than the story itself.