Showing the Extra Stuff

While it's often tempting - and fun - to think of digital history applications (or digital applications at all) as large, flashy, extroverted things laden with all manner of bells, whistles and gongs, some of the neater ones are just as likely to be subtler or halfway invisible.

I recently came across a neat-looking equivalent of that sort of thing while catching up on various world events on BBC News' site last week. BBC News' articles increasingly have sidebars, popup windows, small videos, etc., which add extra substance or detail or visual examples to complement the text of their articles. While reading one article about the chaos in Zimbabwe and the international reaction to same, I found the infobox midway through the article to be a really good example of this sort of thing. Using nothing but very basic HTML (check the page source!), the article manages to briefly describe and illustrate the stances of ten African countries near Zimbabwe not only clearly, but in a way that only takes up a few square inches of screen real estate. Those who don't want to follow up can just keep scrolling through the article, and those who do can get a decent amount of information (by news-article standards) easily, compactly, and with minimal requirements for outside software (like the generally-overdone use of Flash for just about everything).

I can't argue much with the timing of coming across that kind of example (or at least coming across it while equipped to notice it), in any case. Having recently finished one educational project as part of the public history program, setting off on another as part of a summer internship, and tentatively putting together material for a third major one in the fall, I've had the presentation of supplemental information on my mind for awhile. I generally think it's better to present more information than less; too much rather than too little. At the same time, I know full well that if I'm erring on the side of excess, doing so in a manner that isn't overwhelming is kind of important. This one does that job quite well, and it's got me thinking of ways to adapt it to various purposes in my current and future projects.