The Narrative Web

Mark Bernstein's A List Apart article tells explicitly what I learned as an English major. Some of Mark's good advice:

• Narratives are inevitable and good.
• Use an appropriate narrative style for the text.
• Show, don't tell.
• Be conscious of the implications of your web creation.

It is a good thing that Mark Bernstein wants the web and its hypertext form to be a fine art. Most people only look at a bad website for ten seconds before closing its window. I see all forms of hypertext as intertextual in some way to other forms of art. A good novel may purposely mislead the reader for dramatic effect, but it doesn't jerk them around. I find poor websites a pain to navigate if I even get that far. Mark Bernstein mentions credibility, and good writing is part of credibility. Mark Bernstein also mentions hypertext guru Jakob Nielson's website. While Bernstein calls Nielson's website "starkly functional minimalism," I would call it overwhelming. "Design Eye for the Usability Guy" shows ways to make it fabulous. Oh, and isn't alistapart.com a great website? I've really enjoyed it since it came out.