Using APEX@IGP

Moving around APEX@IGP

Primary Navigation

The various information topics are navigated through nested Content pages. These are organized as a topic taxonomy. The deeper you go, the more specific the information.

The highest level contents page branches into the various information Wings of the site. They have large interactive blocks for navigation. These display a shadow on hover to indicate they are active.

Content pages may list Information Wings and/or Topics that are not active. These are faded and do not respond when hovered or clicked. The presence of an inactive Info Wing or Topic is and indication that it is actively under preparation and should be available in the near future.

Return to APEX@IGP

You can return to the main site home page from the top navigation bar at any time by clicking on APEX@IGP Home.

Return to Information Wing

You can return to the home page of any Information Wing by clicking on NameWing Home on the top navigation bar.

Next Previous browsing

The top and bottom navigation bars have linear next and previous topic navigation. You can traverse the entire site with the PREVIOUS and NEXT options. The bottom navigation bar also has a TOP option in the center.

Topic internal navigation

Topics can be very long. To facilitate topic navigation you can click on every heading to return to the top of the page. At the top of the page there is an IN THIS ARTICLE navigation block on the top right. This is the Article Table of Contents. It is interactive to three levels of Headings. There is an example on this page.

Orphan Pages

A topic may open any number of presentation orphan pages when required. Orphan pages links are generally in a sidebar. Orphan pages open in a new window and are not linked to the site navigation. After looking at an orphan you close it and return to the Topic.

Use your keyboard

If you are not a regular keyboard navigator you will probably find the site is easier to read using the page UP/DOWN buttons than clicking on the scrollbar. User Alt-Left Arrow and Alt-Right Arrow to navigate viewed pages.

Search

We will be adding a subject | keyword | full-text search engine to the various @IGP information sites sometime later in 2012. This will make it easier to track down required information if you know what you are searching for.

Organization

Information Wings

We use the term "Information Wing" (Info Wing) as the primary content organization metaphor.

APEX@IGP is NOT designed for casual browsing. It handles the specific subjects in the content page at a detailed functional and practitioner level. 

We feel the term "Information Wing" gives both the feeling and assurance of information segregation, and provides the information dynamic required for a resource of this nature.

Each Info Wing is an independent and specific collection of topics about a target information/knowledge area.

Different people have different depths of information and knowledge requirement. Generally you would have to consider APEX@IGP as a deep information and knowledge resource. The current planned Information Wings for APEX@IGP are:

• IGP:FoundationXHTML
• Digital Content Production
• Interactivity
• Digital Content Formats
• Digital Content Glossary

The various Information Wings are very different in their information focus so it should be understood that cross links between Info Wings is a significant shift of knowledge focus.

Topics

APEX@IGP is a series of stand-alone topics. The topics may be divided into an article sequence where required in which case the first article in the sequence will have a content structure with navigation options to the article set.

Topics are written to be stand-alone to the extent possible; sometimes to the extent of repeating information available in other topics. This increases the value of the individual topics as information resources. Remote linking is used sparingly. Some topics have a reference section at the bottom rather than arbitrary links throughout the document.

Presentation and styling

APEX@IGP defines a new digital content presentation format that is neither print, e-book nor strictly web site. 

It uses familar print layout techniques optimized for online viewing rather than website so-called best practices. It uses some print techniques (DropCaps and small caps for example) as a joke. Of course some may not see the joke. All units are pixels. There are a few percent and em layout units, but not many.

Page layout

The page layout is 3/4 columns leaving enough room in the right side margin for sidebars and other floated content referenced from the text. This is NOT optimized for mobile devices. It uses hover interactive indicators extensively.

Bodytext

The bodytext is WOFF fonts, serif, and uses a modestly large font size. Paragraphs have the print equivalent of a half-line bottom margin and are not indented. This means when columns are used lines will not match horizontally. That is how it should be. There is no page baseline on a digital content page. We could have used a single line-height, but it significantly breaks the reading flow.

The bodytext uses justified text and browser hyphens where supported. Native browser hyphenation is not particularly brilliant at this stage. It is turned on as an experiment and to evaluate the reading experience with a classic print presentation technique in an online context.

Headings

All Headings are sans-serif and coloured. Heading nesting is limited to HTML H4, or C-Head in old print terminology. All Headings are interactive and return the reader to the Topic Table of Contents at the top of the page. Strong vertical navigation is more powerful than flipping pages for reference content.

Images and tables

We allow tables and images to flow outside of page margins if it is relevant to the information. Image thumbnails with scrolling viewers are also provided for topics with large volumes of large images.

Large horizontal tables are allowed to flow horizontally to the extent required. There is no design reason to constrain them to a fixed page width as all desktop browsers will scroll horizontally without effort.

Fixed layout blocks are used where relevant. This is mostly associated with topoics on designing for tablets. Where possible these are created as orphan pages.

APEX@IGP uses standard IGP:FoundationXHTML tagging patterns for everything. It is easy to produce sophisticated layouts and address spot design requirements.

Accessibility and web-practices

The site content is highly accessible and flows in sequence when CSS is collapsed. Generally Headings are used in nested sequence except for text-blocks which always start at Heading 4. Accessibility is a core design requirement of IGP:FoundationXHTML. The exception is where Javascript is used for fixed-layout block presentation.

@IGP sites do not use "Web site production" best practices. It is not targeting the 50 line, short attention span content market. The @IGP pages are long, detailed, and designed for long-reading.

There is no attempt to address older browsers. That is a digital content dead-end. APEX@IGP is not selling anything. It is impossible to address the topic of bleeding-edge digital content production from the context of browser compatability. 

In particular the site uses the CSS box-model: border-box model. This will fail in all Internet Explorer browsers and give a significantly different layout from standards based browsers.

The @IGP sites are restricted to those browsers that are highly standards compliant and tracking the latest CSS, HTML5, and other features. If you view this site in any older browser it is likely you will see a load of junk. If you are accessing the site from a work environment that does not allow real browsers, you will not be able to use this site.