New York Times stories have a feature that could be an interesting presentation option for topic maps.
I can highlight arbitrary text and a question icon appears above it. Select the icon and more information appears about the highlighted text.
I like it because:
- it offers help, when I ask for it
- it doesn’t require inline markup
Library use case: I am reading a journal article online and when I select the title of a reference, I should be able to see a link to that article and any related resources. (As opposed to being 3, maybe 4 screens away from the where I can see the cited article and then have to navigate back to the original article.)
As a user I won’t be exposed to topic/association/occurrence or proxies and legends. But if the point is to deliver the latest information across semantic barriers, that’s ok. Right?
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PS: The New York Times has had this feature for some time. I hadn’t seen it because I usually read the New York Times on the weekends and in hard copy.