This site explores some of the possibilities and techniques of electronic documents, rethinking the traditional, two-dimensional static versions that professional and technical writers must routinely produce. Throughout, the goal is responding more usefully to the shifting needs of readers.

Because those readers increasingly expect new media solutions to their documentation problems, professional writers must be able to provide them, especially those delivered via the Web.

These explorations, therefore, are all Web-based, using standard, free plug-ins (such as Flash and occasionally QuickTime). A discussion of the ideas and techniques accompanies each demonstration.

Click here for a note on books.

Click here to check to see that you have the necessary plug-ins.

Given an electronic text, what should you annotate? What should your reader click?

Text is my shorthand for any primary document, whether it is in fact a literal text, an image, a video, a piece of music, an experiment in natural or social science, a mathematical theorem, a historical document, an artifact, or anything else.

Abstractions are difficult to grasp for many people. But make them not only concrete but manipulable, and the abstractions become real.

• Balls: Objects moving through fluids.
  • User control via a slider
  • User control via numeric input
    
• The Binomial Drag: Manipulating math.
• Offside: Puck first, skate second.
• The Syllogism: Visual logic that you can touch

Common business and statistical charts go electric.

• Line graph
• Pie Chart
• Tables

An exploded diagram is helpful—and exploding one, more so. (They also implode.)

• A Wheel Hub
• A Surface Gauge with annotations

• The Chalice: Latent images appear on call in this electronic rendering of a perception classic.
• How Cruel Are You? Re-enact Stanley Milgram's classic experiment.
• We Not Only See, We look For. Re-enact Robert Leeper's classic experiment.

Timelines: The four flights of 911, in synch.

One Gesture, Many Meanings: An example of an electronic variorum edition of a play. Video, text, and commentary, with the latter covering several topics.

An Annotated Video Hamlet: Advice to the players, professional-writer style.

The Re-Purposed Map: Readers not only vary in their interest in a particular map, but that interest varies over time. Only an electronic can accommodate that. Read more about the ideas behind making such maps.

The Horse Race: The smart money is one the electronic version.

The Works of Pieter Bruegel

A proof of concept slide show in which when the user clicks an image, it scales up (with a zoom effect) so that it can be viewed with more detail. In addition, a scrolling window supplies a discussion of the image.

When the user clicks the scaled up image again, it zooms back to its original position and size, and the discussion is replaced with a reminder of how the page works.

If you wish, d rag the bottom-right corner of the window to scale the site to a size that works best for your monitor.

Break-Even Analysis: A rich-internet application that lets users visualize what it takes to make a profit.