In an earlier post, I railed against long pages and the need to scroll for miles to get to the bottom of a blog or article. Such is the nature of the web, particularly when room must be made for user comments, banner ads, etc. Still, uber-scrolling is something I try to avoid.
So, I go to work on my term project for LIS 5433 -- a website designed to show budding Wizard Rockers how to create and distribute their music for free, using exclusively no-cost, downloadable software -- and guess what?
Scroll Hell, that's what.
With all the step-by-step processes I have to list, the pics I'm using to illustrate them, and top-and-side navigation for ease of use, there's no way around the "long-ass pages" I so crassly derided a few weeks ago. So, those words now cling to my buttocks with their sharp, pointed teeth.
In my defense, and for the edification of all readers, I close with a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance," because it's a good thing to re-read every now and then. If ever a case can be made for reading a long-ass page, it would be for this essay.
"With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Out upon your guarded lips! Sew them up with pockthread, do. Else if you would be a man speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today."
Oh, and there's this part, which I'm sure Emerson would apply to my scroll rant:
"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius."
Long live scrolling.
Monday, October 22, 2007
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1 comments:
I know you are trying to be brief, but you HAVE to put in the whole paragraph...the beginning and the end are just as good as the middle!
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."
You simply cannot leave out the hobgoblins and the syncopation of in the first sentence.
I love Emerson!!!
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