Hypercompendia

It’s been such fun the last couple of days getting into hypertext again. Working from Steve Ersinghaus’ New Media class collaboration of “Apartment 9”, the students were asked to select a point of entry and continue a story from there.

I find that writing flash fiction for a couple years has changed my style of writing as I mentioned in an earlier post but it’s becoming more second nature to me now to write into the hypertext narrative form. It all comes back; working with Eastgate’s Tinderbox software, recalling the process of rolling out story without being limited to a single linear arc.

The one thing that hasn’t changed: I find myself falling back into the process of a structured map. I find it easier to create several Notes at a time (blank–“untitled”) and have them ready to write into as the stories develop. Making a new note is quick and easy in Tinderbox, yet the fast-pace of story learned via writing and reading flash fiction calls for minimal interruption and having the blank text box Notes ready is helpful.

And I prefer the Map View to write into both for its visual appeal and for its obvious view of the “whole picture” of where the story is going. But I’m simply not able to make a map without creating it as a proportioned, orderly, geometrically sound piece of art in itself:

Boy, it’s not easy getting back into hypertext narrative. Whoever says it’s the same as traditional text is wrong.

After almost two years of focusing on flash fiction–which is a style that requires a quick body punch–it almost seems like hypertext story is the opposite; expansion on concept and questions and answers instead.

While the text boxes of Tinderbox, the software I use to write hyperfiction, are exquisitely perfect for sticking with a concise, free of overwriting style, the knowledge that more data, more information, more detail, can be added in bits and pieces by simply creating another “Note” leaves a writer more open to creative flare. No one expects you to read every bit of that data so there’s really no overload. While a story may contain fifty Notes, you can get from beginning to end in forty, thirty, twenty perhaps.

I’ve just had the enticement to get back physically and mentally into hypertext narrative, something I’ve been saving to do next year, after I finish out this year’s daily flash fiction writing. But it’s not easy going from one to another form. Just as with the novel, the short story, or poetry, the mindset is completely different and I as a writer must admit I am struggling as if for the very first time.

Really happy to say that my hypertext story “Blueberries”, originally published in New River Journal, has also been selected for translation into Polish publication, been included in a doctoral dissertation, listed in the ELO directory, and a part of a new media college syllabus. Makes me itchy to get back to hypertext writing.
Just looked up the translation of “blueberries” as a title into Polish, and found:

czarne jagoda   (“jagody” means berries, and I thought “czarne” meant “black”)

jagody amerykańskie  (Since blueberries aren’t native to Poland this comes out as “American Berries”)

borówki (this one claims to be “Blueberries”)

czarne borówki  (Again, (“Black Blueberries”)

And this one’s my fave: “There is no human translation for that”

So far, Safari has been able to point out various HTML errors that Firefox automatically appears to override and fix.  I’ve used Firefox and like it, but when working on a hypertext piece that’s going to go online, it’s become obvious that you need to pick one of the pickier browsers to work with.

What worked beautifully in Firefox didn’t work with all browsers. I have FF and Safari on the Mac–which is naturally where I’m working since I use Tinderbox to start the piece out. On my PC, which I rarely use but have for backup and to hold all the years’ worth of stuff pre-Mac, I use Internet Explorer as the default browser and have since downloaded Chrome and Opera. That gives me two operating systems and five browsers to check the work. Also, I might add, different screen resolutions because of the various monitor sizes. This led to the last problem I need to deal with, the background images which looked great on my Mac, but fell a couple hundred pixels short on the PCs.

Safari’s refusal to accept font color tags unless they were posted before each paragraph of hidden or stretch text (in a group of three paragraphs, the middle one would return to the main text color) was similar to one of the other browsers that would only take the first paragraph and then return. I’m sure there’s a more professional way of doing this–which is why I wish I’d learned coding from the basics instead of jumping into the middle–but I did manage to fix by tagging each paragraph.

The problem of an uncentered image on the first page, where I inserted a 400px wide image instead of the 550px, I had used the proper code within the head:

<style type=”text/css”>

.stretchTarget {
margin: none;
margin-left: 100px;
}

</style>

It wasn’t until I studied another page where I’d done the same thing in stretchtext that I discovered I had changed a headline size from h1 to h2 but hadn’t changed the closing tag. (The image came from the linked headline) and so even though the headline was okay, it messed up what followed–the image.

So while I’ll likely still work in Firefox, I’ll know enough to doublecheck immediately each page in Safari as I work. Of course the best way would be to run the pages through the W3C Validation Service, but that shows me that my pages really have no right to be working at all and just makes me feel bad.

Have finally spent some time yesterday on finishing up A Bottle of Beer. I’ve included images I’ve taken myself and Photoshopped into more artistically (some, not all are done well–I’ve gotten some confidence since several of my graphics have now been accepted for publication!) suitable visuals and managed to get them to “hide” and “unhide” via stretchtext.

It’s likely the “flashiest” piece I’ve done, and likely that is because it was first written into Hyptertextopia and that was their basic color choice–black background and brightly colored links. But it suits this piece, and while I’m tempted to explain that the colored text that is revealed via links are the themes and separate from the main (white text) narrative, I suppose I’ll have to “Barthesize” and let the reader figure that out. And love it or hate it.

I’m still working on the problem of the hidden text not remaining consistent in color in Safari and Internet Explorer. I’ve solved it by adding the font tags to each paragraph. I’ve still to check if the stretchtext works in IE and Chrome. It works properly in Firefox (which is what I use) and in Safari so far. (UPDATE: Chrome showed up two open font tags but everything else was okay–odd that Safari and Firefox automatically closed them. Also, in working on the other PC with a larger screen, didn’t realize my background images set at 1280 x 800 weren’t sufficient. Have to work on that so that not too much relevant stuff is cut out on the right hand side. Maybe need to float or code to fit screen?) (UPDATE #2: Downloaded and tried Opera and everything works.)

Learned a lot, and am happy that this piece–aside from the tweaks and maybe some image changes–is finally displayed at its best.

I don’t have the kinks worked out yet about hidden images linked from hidden text, nor the different browser display of any images at all, but I’m giving myself a break and playing in Photoshop with some of my photos I’ve selected for A Bottle of Beer.

Still playing around with size and placement, but this is the fun part:

UPDATE: Did get the image to work, but only as the target from original text links–as opposed to stretchtext hidden text links. Haven’t checked it with IE and Chrome yet, but it works in FF and Safari. Haven’t done anything with the font color problem yet since it works in two out of four browsers and that’s likely an easier problem to fix.

Just when I thought I was hot shit getting all that stretchtext working properly I exported the piece to the site online and problems immediately came up.

While I work with Firefox to open the html pages offline, I still needed to see the flow of the narrative when sticking in the images on a more occasional basis, since once the stretchtext is in the Tinderbox form, I can’t see where they are (including them into the main text of the box from whence they emerge), and in the file exported to a desktop file, they are arranged alphabetically rather than by narrative flow. Once the pages were set with the stretchtext code and the font, sizes, etc. were pretty much decided and working, and Firefox opening the file on the hard drive worked the images open in stretchtext, then I exported the project online. And the fun began.

In Firefox, the images don’t show up. In Safari, something worse; the stretchtext seems to have lost it’s font color in the middle paragraph of three–though two paragraphs will hold the color:

Then I went over to the PC and with Windows XP and Internet Explorer, found that only the first paragraph held the font color while subsequent paragraphs returned to white, even though the closing font tag was not until after the last paragraph.

The image, in Firefox showed nothing, in IE and Safari showed the empty place-holder box:

So I downloaded Chrome on the PC. It handles the font-color code, but not the images. Chrome also didn’t display the Rockwell font very well, almost made it unreadable while it was fine in the other three browsers. So that’s four browsers and two of them have trouble with the font color changes and all four have a problem with the images. The colors, BTW, are your standard #ffffff, #000000, #ff0000, #00ff00, and #0000ff.  Looks like I’ll be doing some work on this today. But then this is one of my strong points, I love to track down problems and solve them. I’m just a bit slow.

Had to export the new Bottle of Beer online to work with it since the new Tinderbox version doesn’t show the stretchtext and the html templates don’t show the hypertext flow. It’s easier to see where images might be effective in the linear flow of the work, and in the hard drive file of html pages, the files are alphabetical.

I do have a problem. While the stretchtext seemed to easily accommodate the images while I was working with the local files, once it was exported onsite, the images weren’t being called in. I’ve tried a couple different browsers (I use Firefox normally) such as Safari and IE, but so far, it doesn’t work. I’ve also changed the coding to reflect “url” though I’ve yet to type in the whole url, and I’ve changed the file location from a separate images file to standing within the whole “abob” file.

Switched the font to Rockwell which is a bit more readable in the colored text on black than Georgia was, and a bit more classy than the Lucida Grande I was using.

Found the no-repeat coding for the images on the background, though I still can’t seem to tweak the right lines to make the image go all the way across the screen nor have some top margin. But an alternate way of working with the background images is to produce a black screen in Photoshop and drag in the image and place it where I want it, such as this:

Though it’s my preferred method of learning, that is, getting an idea then having to seek the answer, it’s proving a bit unwieldy.

I’ve gotten the templates all done, all the stretchtext in place–at least for the text–and am moving on to once more changing fonts–that’s a snap–and size of the boxes, or borders.

Then I think of putting an image into the background, outside of the bordered boxes, occasionally. But I realize that I have a new css that doesn’t include the different columns, so the background of the body is the background to all. So that’s one thing to play with.

Then I’m thinking, maybe something different, like doing away with the top and bottom borders of the boxes which indeed suits the concept of stretchtext, but of course, needs some margin refiguring.

The idea of an image in the background is not a whole one that covers the page, as in Blueberries, but rather one that may peek from an edge, or horizontally boldly cross the page like a highway.

All this is what’s bouncing around in my mind, so many ideas, so many possible ways to code them in. Yet at some point I know that what I really need to do is start back from the beginning with understanding the codes of HTML and CSS and jQuery. Otherwise, just as with my prior project for the 100 Hypertexts of 2009, I’ll end up with stylesheets that run on forever, adding in each solution for each problem posed by a whim.

So here I am, anxious to get done with this project of revamping A Bottle of Beer, and while it’d be poised to go as is, wanting as well to throw new elements into it. And another problem comes in: I’ve three books on coding and only two hands.

With any luck, I’ll post the new version of ABOB soon, before I decide I want to have Mexican music in the background as well.

On the centering of the image, I just added in: margin-left: 50px;  in the css under .stretchTarget  –  With a body width of 600px and setting the images at 500, this should center them. This also moves the text, but that’s fine with me for now; I kind of like the offset (though 50px is high and not as necessary with the text color change in this piece). That may defeat the effect of stretchtext, but at the same time, it offers a visual border separating original from hidden which may better serve the reader. In any event, I can as well make the images larger to come within 5-10px of the borders. Then again, all of this changes when I drop the box outlines I seem to still love so much.

In Tinderbox, I was unable to see the actual text of the note in the HTML View on this piece for some reason and added: ^text^ in <div id=”text”>^text^</div> in the html template and that solved that problem.

While I’m getting the piece into its new format, I’m also thinking on:

• Hidden images with clickable text – where the image would be very light and vague but the text would read normally.
• Moving the hidden text/image/whatever to a third (or whatever) column, out of alignment of the piece.
• Adding in audio and moving visuals.

There were a few more–but I can’t recall right now. I’ve also added STRETCHTEXT to the Categories and Tags here for easier retrieval.