WEB

 A web is a set of documents with little or no actual overall structure; the anything typing each page together is a link (see figure 2.13). visitors drift from document to document,. Following the links around.

For an example of such a site, visit Wikipedia at http://wikipedia. Org. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written and maintained by the public. Anyone can write a new article or edit an existing article, and the site is very loosely organized. Articles that reference topics discussed in other articles link to them, creating a web organization scheme. Wikipedia has no hierarchical organization; you’re expected to find

the topics you’re interested in by following links or using the search functionality.

Web structures tend to be free-floating and enable visitors to wander aimlessly through the content. Web structures are excellent for content that’s intended to be meandering or unrelated or when you want to encourage browsing. The world wide web itself is, of course, a giant web structure.

In the context of a website, the environment is organized so that each page is a specific location (and usually contains a description of that location). From that location,  you can move in several different directions, exploring the environment much in the way you  would move from room to room in a building in the real world (and getting lost just as easily). The initial home page, for example, might look something like the one shown in figure 2.14

From that page, you then can explore once of the links, for example, to go into the building, which takes you to the page shown in figure 2.15.

FIGURE 2.14 the home page for a web-based virtual environment.

FIGURE 2.15 another page in the web environment.

Each room has a set of links to each adjacent room in the environment. By following the links, you can explore the rooms in the environment.

The problem with web organizations is that you can get lost in them to easily-just as you might in the world you’re exploring in the example. Without any overall structure to the content, figuring out the relationship between where you are, where you’re going and, often, where you’ve been, us difficult. Context is difficult, and often the only way to find your way back out of a web structure is to retrace you steps. Web structures can be extremely disorienting and immensely frustrating if you have a specific goal in mind.

To solve the problem of disorientation, you can use clues on each page. Here are two ideas:

·         Provide a way out. Return to home page is an excellent link.

·         Include a map of the overall structure on each page, with a “you are here” indication somewhere in the map. It doesn’t ha we to be an actual visual map, but providing some sort of context goes along way toward preventing your visitors from getting lost.