How do students navigate around
this website without getting lost?
Good question. The website has been built over
a period of years, and it has accreted layers rather chaotically. I'm
currently in the process of restructuring it in a more standardized
format, a long and frustrating process. As Seneca said, "The road to
the stars is filled with tears." Since I didn't plan my road carefully
in the beginning, I'm crying now as I redo much of my earlier work.
There's a moral here for those of you organizing your own papers or
websites.
In spite of that painful difficulty, the website
grows more standardized. On each side of this webpage, note the two
menu-bars containing the nebulae. Every webpage will eventually contain
such a vertical menu on the left-hand side.
Cool Blue Nebula:
You will see the cool blue nebula if you are in a section of the website
devoted to writing or related materials such as grammar, research, and
rhetoric. I will also use the blue nebula to mark introductory or explanatory
materials on the website generally.
Fiery Red Nebula:
On the other hand, if you are in a section of the website devoted to
literature or the humanities, you should see a menu-bar with the flaming
red nebula of Antares B. The menu-bar should contain the same options
in either case; only the image differs.
None of the Above:
Sometimes, you will lose the normal sidebar and its links. That happens
in areas where it is important for students to follow guidelines sequentially,
such as some poetry assignments. In these cases, I have eliminated the
sidebars so you procede from step one to step two and so on in a linear
manner.
Bottom of Page:
At the bottom of each page, there is a menubar containing three or four
links. One link will always take you back
to the home page for the website. In especially
long webpages, the button in the bottom-middle will take you to an anchor
at the top of of the page you are on. The third link is an e-mail link
to contact me. The last link always takes you out of my website into
the university's webpage.
Background Color:
Also note the color of the background. A light-blue (such as what appears
behind this text you are reading) usually indicates introductory reading
material and grammar material. A yellowish background
indicates literary reading material. White backgrounds indicate handouts,
or material designed for legibility when printed from a printer. If
you try to print material from this website, and the background color
interferes with legibility, you can cut and paste the text into a word-processing
file to eliminate the problem. If a page shows the material in an awkward
manner, try adjusting the size of your web-browsing window by "pulling"
on its lower-right corner with the cursor/mouse.
Under Construction:
If there is an unfinished page (or a section of a page) I will eventually
try to mark that spot with a construction bar, like the one below.
To mark links that aren't yet finished, I will
place a small yellow and black square beside the link, but that
is a long-term project.
If you have questions, my e-mail
address appears on the bottom of each page.
