The Shakespeare Herald
A New Look
"Fresh array and entertainment" (As You Like It, TLN 2207)
We are pleased to announce the launch of an enhanced and updated version of the site.
We have taken advantage of advances in browser technology and interface design by
offering a cleaner look and more detailed menus to guide our users through our extensive
Shakespeare resources. We have also taken this opportunity to upgrade a number of
features of the site, and to add some more tools for research.
Over the years we have made many changes and improvements to the site, at one stage
experimenting with adding advertisements (we ended that experiment when they brought
in very little to support the site). But in the rapidly-evolving world of the Internet
we need to keep up with changing technologies and user expectations. The background
graphic design and navigation of the site has been unchanged for several years, and
it's a tribute to the fine work done by our designers, Roberta Livingstone and Chris
Chong that it lasted so well. When we first created our splash page, we were rather
worried that it would ask too much of the then-narrow bandwith of most users on the
Web. But times have changed, and it's now possible to update the fonts, the general
appearance of the site, and the means of navigating through it.
Some highlights
- Enhanced menus at the top of the screen take you directly to the area of the site that has the information you seek.
- We have moved our Toolbox and Page Contents from the right of the screen to the left. We found that some visitors were missing these features because they had become so used to ignoring advertisements in this space.
- For Friends of the ISE we have added some new research tools:
- The capacity to take and save notes on any page of the site.
- A printable view of all annotations in any scene of the play (when fully edited).
The illustration of the Toolbox you see here is from Henry V, shown as a Friend of the ISE would view it.
Acknowledgements
Our thanks again to Roberta Livingstone, who worked with Jon Valade from IdeaZone in producing the graphics and the improved navigation. Our team of programmers and research assistants, under the leadership of Max Terpstra and Telka Duxbury, have worked hard to bring the new version to our global audience.