Reading Summary:
Rob Shields, Chapter 7 (page 145) in Herman, A and Swiss, T, The World Wide Web and Contemporary Culture
Links, which are often ignored by critics, are essential to both navigation and composition of web pages.
Shields argues that links disrupt the flow and static quality of a page as they are always viewed in motion and give viewers the opportunity to go elsewhere.
The Web is a dynamic, vectoral space which consists of action calls to servers, files and links and the full scale of the Web is very hard to understand. The internet as ‘big’ as it is, is represented to us as simply a tool, or straightforward object.
Many studies of the WWW assume a remarkable completeness of web sites / pages; however, this idea disregards the vibrant features of the users experiences. Shields suggests that it is important to look at the nature of hypertext and links as he thinks that movement is a key factor.
Hypertext links have a ‘double function’. They are both part of a page or text but also indicates to the viewer that they have the option to go and view another page instead. As links are both part of the text and also provide access to another page, they can be seen as contradictory.
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RINCY
ReplyDeleteHi Becky, I was just wondering - do you have any thoguhts abotu all this? You've done a good job of explaining what other people thought, but what about Becky?
ReplyDeletesorry about the spelling mistakes!!
ReplyDeleteI do agree with Sheilds that hyperlinks disrupt the flow of a webpage.
ReplyDeleteHowever, in my opinion, this is a good thing. Hyperlinks give you opportunity and choice, you don't have to navigate away from the page if you don't want to but the option is available.
I think the argument that hyperlinks are contradictory is true, but i feel it seems to give hyperlinks a negative connotation which they don't deserve.
We've not know the web without hyperlinks, but i imagine it would not be as easy or educational.