Britain and the Sea:

If it is considered that two suites of pages - "introductory" and "specialist" are absolutely required, then it would be logical to keep the two elements of the Unfolding ToC distinct. That is, whereas the "introductory" suite would need only the top-level pages, the "specialist" suite would need everything. For ease of updating, there should be no in-text links from introductory to lower-level pages - only ToC links.

"A skeleton layout for a set of HTML pages, in both a "simple" and an "in depth" suite"

Gloss: in spite of my first suggestion, after listening to your ideas at our meeting I now consider two separate suites of pages a bad idea, because (a) they seem to "classify" the readership; (b) they would require two different rationales, one for either suite of pages; and (c) they would be more difficult to update and extend. Hence I now suggest one suite, extensible/collapsible by the user, which allows skimming over some areas, and in-depth consideration of others.

Under such a design, there would be access only to a restricted range of images through the top-level pages; so that access to the full range would be possible only via the "specialist" pages. This might well be suitable for teachers, who can teach from the upper-level pages, and allow students to explore by delving down a level or two.

suites or just colours/typeface/fonts? Even simpler than having unfolding suites of pages would simply be to distinguish the general from the "heavy stuff" by a change of text colour or indeed typeface and/or font (always choosing a typeface that all browsers can identify and display). The result might be parallel to that of body-text and footnotes in

A nice additional touch might be to have the colour of hotspots on mouseover change in accordance with the "level" the target represents (or even contrasting colour, depending on what text colour you decide to have). This might be fine if we go for only two levels. If we had more than two levels, such colour changes might get confusing.

  1. attitude should be to leave choice of simple/depth to user: there could be some sections that everyone will want to delve into; others really for specialists;
  2. for this reason call the two types introductory and in depth, and flag them by background page-colour;
  3. this is best arranged by having "unfolding" pages, where the Intro-page to each section is simple, and the user has the choice of going further for each elaboration; the menu could unfold on the page itself, or even open in a separate window. The former seems preferable: it is simpler, and the user has full control over the enlarging/collapsing;
  4. the flag indicating that enlarging/contracting was possible might be either a bottom-right-of-page special arrow labelled expand or elaborate; or (b) simply specially-coloured hotlinked text anywhere in the page;
  5. using such an expand/collape approach, there is no need to talk down to the public or school students, or put the academic bits into a kind of high-level purdah;
  6. text- and image-based questions/quizzes could be used to engage the attention. No direct answers provided, but URLs which lead the user toward "answers";
  • different kinds of groupings for different audiences: to tell (a) an historical story; (b) a technical story; (c) artistic development under various impulses; (d) to illustrate artistic conventions in battle scenes, death, allegories of trade, reasons for so much marine painting, etc;