WWODesign

Preliminary Wireframes

These wireframes are drafts of some of the layout and interface ideas JF and JM have been discussing during October. These are intended to convey basic ideas about layout and structure at a fairly abstract level, and aren't meant to say anything about the actual appearance or styles of any elements.

Default View

This is the main WWO page as seen on entry. Main features:

• Header with persistent navigation
• A sidebar on the left with basic search box and metadata facets
• The overview section in the center of the page, with multiple tabs that can display lists of texts (e.g. the results from a search) or visualizations (in the "Oracle"). This area also contains a narrow vertical timeline that can be used to manipulate a list of found documents or a visualization (in some cases?)
• The full text view, in the right-hand portion of the page. This displays the full text when an item (or datapoint in a visualization/timeline) is selected in the overview section.

Default View: Detailed Version

A more detailed version of the default view a user might see when first entering WWO. This shows some basic information facets that can be used for narrowing down the list of texts in the overview section, a timeline view that can be used to find specific texts, etc. By default, the full contents of WWO would appear in the list of titles in the central overview section, and presumably a standard set of facets could be displayed on the left. The text viewing area would remain empty until a text is selected.

Default View: Advanced Search

This shows the advanced search option (basic search -- keyword, title, etc. -- is always available in the left sidebar). I'm envisioning this as an overlay that expands when the user toggles the option for advanced searching, rather than a separate page -- but that's just one possible approach.

I've only included some search options (standard metadata fields, a date slider for selected specific periods of time, genres) but there would be room to add more as we developed/added more sophisticated search features.

Default View: Selecting a Text

This is what a user might see after selecting a text from the central overview area. (How the user arrives at this selection would vary: the list of possible texts to choose from could be the default list of all WWO titles, it could be a filtered list resulting from choosing specific facets, or it could be a list of texts resulting from a search of some sort.)

The full text displays in the text viewing area on the right side of the page. When a text is displayed here, a contextual menu providing options for dealing with that text could appear; it might contain options for viewing metadata, for changing viewing settings (like toggling specific textual features, setting colors, etc.), downloading a PDF/EPUB/XML file for that text, or viewing the text in "reader" mode.

Below the contextual menu is a text position slider, showing the reader's current position in the document.

To the left of specific parts of the text (in this case, the title page and the introduction) are markers that can be selected to bring up a view of the document's structure, permitting the reader to get a sense of where she is in the overall document and allowing her to jump to other parts of the text.

Although a full text is visible and can be read in this view, the list of titles (or search results), the "oracle", timeline, facets, and search all persist, making it possible for the reader to choose another text or perform another operation at any time without having to back out or go to another page.

Default View: Text Menu (Metadata)

One possible view of what you might see if you select an option from the text menu.

Default View: Generate TOC

This shows one possible method for providing a reader access to a generated TOC for a given document. In this case, the reader has clicked on the small icon to the left of a major structural unit (here, the title page -- but it could be any div-level section). This brings up an overlay that highlights the current section and shows other sections in the text. Clicking on any item in this generated TOC will take the reader to that section.

Default View: Text Menu (Settings)

Possible settings view, activated by choosing an option in the text menu. In this case, the reader sees options for manipulating the appearance of both the "edited" view and the "source" view. The reader could toggle between these two viewing modes, or change options for specific textual features in the current viewing mode. Manipulation of these features could come in the form of toggling them on/off (though that would depend on the specific feature in question) or, possibly, changing their color, background, or rendition.

More later...