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161 lines
6.5 KiB
161 lines
6.5 KiB
<html>
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<head>
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<title>Welcome to the New Lurker's Guide</title>
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<map name="toplevel">
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<area shape="RECT" coords="0,0,99,23" href="/lurk/universe/intro.html" alt="Universe">
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<area shape="RECT" coords="100,0,199,23" href="/lurk/episodes.php" alt="Episodes">
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<area shape="RECT" coords="200,0,299,23" href="/lurk/making/creators.html" alt="People">
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<area shape="RECT" coords="300,0,399,23" href="/lurk/resources/online.html" alt="Resources">
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<area shape="RECT" coords="400,0,499,23" href="/lurk/reference/episodes.html" alt="Encyclopedia">
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<area shape="RECT" coords="0,24,499,31" nohref>
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</map>
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<map name="titlebar">
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<area shape="RECT" coords="0,0,370,31" href="/lurk/lurker.html" alt="Home">
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<area shape="RECT" coords="371,0,412,31" href="/lurk/search.html" alt="Find">
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<area shape="RECT" coords="413,0,454,31" href="/lurk/toc.html" alt="Index">
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<area shape="RECT" coords="455,0,499,31" href="/lurk/help.html" alt="Help">
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</map>
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<link rel=parent href="lurker.html">
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<link rev=made href="mailto:koreth@hyperion.com">
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</head>
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<body>
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<p align=center nowrap><nobr><img
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align=middle border=0 usemap="#titlebar"
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src="/lurk/nav/titlebar.gif" width=500 height=32
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alt="[Home]">
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<br><img
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align=top border=0 usemap="#toplevel"
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src="/lurk/nav/bar-none.gif" width=500 height=24
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alt="">
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</nobr>
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<h1>Welcome to the new Lurker's Guide!</h1>
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If you've visited before, you probably noticed that things look a wee bit
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different now. The Guide has undergone a near-total overhaul; no page was
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left untouched (unless we've missed something!)
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<p>
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Why the change? A few reasons. First, as the Guide continued to grow, it
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started to burst at the seams in places, and the need for a more
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structured organization (for instance, of the Other Resources section) became
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increasingly apparent. Though you may have looked at the home page
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and thought, "Aha, they've added a bunch of pictures to slow things down,"
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there's actually a considerable amount of change to the structure of the Guide.
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<p>
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If you've spent much time in the Guide in the past, you know it's big. Big
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enough, in fact, that it was often difficult to track down information you
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were looking for. The new look and feel should make navigating around the
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Guide a lot more straightforward. You always have a clear view of where you
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are in the Guide, with a consistent set of navigation tools. It's simple
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to hop from place to place, even to completely different sections.
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<p>
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And, of course, I'd be lying if I said appearance had nothing to do with the
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change. We think we've come up with a fairly pleasing look for the Guide,
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functional and appealing without being garish or hogging obnoxious amounts
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of bandwidth. A bit more on that below.
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<p>
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Who's "we?" Primarily, me (Steven Grimm) and
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<a href="http://www.zocalo.net/~danwood/">Dan Wood,</a>
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who contributed
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enormous amounts of time and energy iterating through literally hundreds of
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different design elements, seeing what worked and what didn't.
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<a href="/~funkster/">Larry Hastings</a>
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also provided some valuable usability feedback early on in the game.
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<p>
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<a href="http://diglib.stanford.edu/~mogens/">Christian Mogensen</a>
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put together one of the major features (and perhaps the most useful one) of the
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new Guide: the "Find" function. If you select the "Find" icon in the title
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bar at the top of every page, or follow the "Find" link on the home page,
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you'll be able to search every JMS message from Usenet and GEnie, as well
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as all the episode synopses and guide pages -- a wonderful tool for folks
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who're trying to figure out where the story's going before it gets there.
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<p>
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There are still some rough edges, places we haven't fixed up as well as we'd
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like; if you spot any truly embarrassing ones, please
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<a href="mailto:koreth+lgfeedback@midwinter.com">send me mail.</a>
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The new Guide will continue to evolve over time, just like any other Web
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site. If you have comments on the new graphics, you can also
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<a href="mailto:danwood@karelia.com">send mail to Dan.</a>
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<p>
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We hope you'll find the new Guide a worthwhile, interesting, and fun place to
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visit.
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<h3>Some technical notes</h3>
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<p>
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As a general rule, I've tried to stick to widely-implemented parts of the
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HTML 3.0 draft standard. The one exception you'll see nearly everywhere
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is that I use the Netscape extension to remove the borders from linked
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inline images. As soon as HTML 3 stylesheets are common,
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I will of course switch to them to control that aspect of the
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presentation. I have no desire to make the Guide browser-dependent.
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At the same time, using that extension improves the appearance of pages with
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lots of buttons so much that I thought it was worthwhile. (For various
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reasons, imagemaps aren't suitable replacements for the rows of buttons. Trust
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me, I considered them.) I've done my best to include meaningful ALT attributes
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everywhere so text-only people can take advantage of the new interface as well.
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<p>
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Those of you who're on low-speed or high-latency net links may object to the
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use of inline images rather than text. We've done our best to keep the
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navigational images as small as possible, and to reuse images wherever we
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can so you'll be able to take advantage of caching. You may find your visit
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speedier if you visit the
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<a href="nav/">Cache Loader</a>
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page before exploring (you'll also find a link to it toward the bottom of the
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home page.) In the
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near future, I'll also begin soliciting mirror sites around the world, so
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there'll be a fairly close copy of the Guide no matter where you are.
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<p>
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If you find the current setup unbearably slow, please let me know.
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Investigating a text-only or minimal-graphics mode is on my to-do list,
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and if there's enough demand I can do it before some other things. Be sure
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to tell me where you are and what your connection to the net is like; it
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may turn out that your needs will be met by a well-placed mirror site.
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(I can't guarantee you an answer, since I expect I'll be getting a lot of
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mail about this change, but your letter won't go unread.)
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<p align=right>
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Steven Grimm<br>
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October 16, 1995
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<p>
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<a href="whatsnew.html">To the What's New page</a>
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<pre>
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</pre>
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<p nowrap>
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<nobr><a href="/lurk/lurker.html"><img
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align=bottom border=0
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width=64 height=24 src="/lurk/nav/foot-station.gif"
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alt="[Home] "></a><a
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href="#"><img
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align=bottom border=0
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width=72 height=13 src="/lurk/nav/foot-pagetop.gif"
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alt="[Top] "></a><a
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href="mailto:koreth+lgfeedback@midwinter.com"><img
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align=bottom border=0
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width=80 height=13 src="/lurk/nav/foot-comments.gif"
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alt="[Comments] "></a><img
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align=bottom
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width=284 height=13 src="/lurk/nav/foot-bare.gif"
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alt="">
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</nobr>
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</body>
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</html>
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