Text Menu

Earthtrends (like Cooperstown [6] and Hummer [23]) was one of 47 winners in the 2002 Communications Arts Interactive Annual 8 Awards. The judges applauded the navigation: “Smart information architecture and content layout make navigating this information-heavy site seem simple.” —Lee Feldman [81] . As Communications Arts describes the site, Earthtrends is an information application that uses DHTML to " create a simplified, informative hierarchy for accessing a huge amount of data. Statistical information is presented to a widely varied audience using an easy-to-follow, systematic approach with no navigation surprises." Carefullly laid out menus and text that is entirely anchoral contribute to meeting navigation expectations and make navigating the site simple.

The creators explain their objectives in meeting several audience's navigational needs: "Based on audience research, we were keenly aware that users were going to want a visual and stepped approach to modeling the data. But there was one additional consideration: We couldn’t hinder power users who would want the freedom to manipulate the data quickly and easily." The creators solved the problem with "a visual front-end that correlated categorical themes with data tools.. . .. In the end we saw a way to combine the interface into a single selection tool that in spite of its more visual approach actually speeds the data modeling process." [116c]

Anchors here provide a textual approach to separating subject categories. Backgrounds change when a new set of anchor menus is moused over, providing a visual approach to separating subject catagories. Each of the subject category anchors offers the same suboptions (searchable database, data tables, country profiles, maps, features). Using the same menu provides a continuity and addresses both naive and advanced user concerns: to get to a destination quickly.

Screenshot used by permission.

Each category's background almost iconically suggests the material: Governance shows a government building, water resources shows a timelapsed stream.

Screenshot used by permission.

These anchors and backgrounds remain the same on secondary pages, providing visual and anchoral continuity.

Further, mousing over each anchor provides an additional explanation of that site, both in an image tag and in a flash box underneath the anchor:

Screenshot used by permission.

This expansion is as detailed as the Idea Line [67]anchoral explanations. Poems That Go Archive's [54] explanations are shorter and Saturn's [60] and Garnier Fructis' [20] more evocative than explanatory.

As each line is itself an anchor, the site dispenses with underlining. Like the BBC [4], text anchors are selectively animated--underlined when moused over.

Screenshot used by permission.