100 Best Curator and Museum Blogs

This blog has been listed in the “100 Best Curator and Museum Blogs” page on the Online Universities site (#16 under “Resources & Advice”). It’s in good company, although I wonder why Seb Chan’s Fresh+New(er) is missing?

New Australian Museum website

Have you seen the new Australian Museum website?

australianmuseum.net.au

(New URL, too; www.austmus.gov.au and www.amonline.net.au now redirect to it.)

It has an interesting What's on functionality: Tabs for different audience types: "General", "Kids", "Under 5s", "Teachers", "Members", "Tourists", with exhibitions, (permanent) displays, events and tours listed together.

All 'end-pages' (that is, pages with content, as opposed to links to content) have 2 buttons: "Add comment" and "Add tags" right after the page heading (you have to be registered with "My museum" to use them) and many of them have the name of the person who wrote them (eg: http://australianmuseum.net.au/Australian-Museum-Palaeontology-Collection), linked to a brief staff profile and a form to contact that person.

That last URL reveals an interesting fact about the site: despite the fact that I got to the page by clicking 'Minerals & fossils' > 'More about Fossils' (reveal) > 'Fossils' > 'More about Fossils in the Australian Museum Collections' (reveal) > 'Australian Museum Palaeontology Collection' (yes, 5 clicks!), the URL shows no hierarchy. The CMS apparently serves every page as though it is in the root directory. The advantage is that URLs are shorter than they otherwise would be but still very readable (a boon for search engines), but a disadvantage is that it obscures the context of the page.

But I have a problem with the "expandable links". Eg: About us:
Try to find out "More about Our Organisation"... It's not a link! You have to click the tiny , to reveal the sub-topics.

Still, overall, it's a very engaging site, full of opportunities to explore, contribute and be involved.

MySource mini

Yesterday (Thursday 30 April 2009), I saw the future of Web content management systems: MySource mini. Squiz.net, the company that created MySource Matrix, have essentially released a working subset of what will become the successor to Matrix (or MySource 4). For now, it is designed for "brochure-ware" sites (basically standard pages + forms). The first thing that makes this unique (as far as I'm aware) is that it is a hardware + software bundle. You buy the server, with the CMS (and 11 page designs) pre-installed and then, for a modest annual fee, the server will automatically receive upgrades and patches as they become available. Squiz say the ideal website for this setup is one with up to 1 GB of content receiving up to 100 000 page-views per day.

The second thing that makes this CMS so revolutionary is that it looks so simple. It actually feels like you're editing the site (ie: the 'front-end') directly. This is very different to the usual conceptual split between 'front-end' and 'back-end'. But the simplicity is an illusion – in a good sense. The technology is incredibly sophisticated.

Noteworthy features include:

• An inline WYSIWYG editor that, unlike others, doesn't rely on the browser's own code libraries. This means that it is truly cross-platform and cross-browser compatible.
• Auto-save (and manual save, of course), with 'revert'
• Image library with generous thumbnails
• A feature that tells the website manager who's logged in and what they're doing (and have been doing)
• All designs have thumbnail screenshots
• System tells you what designs are being used and by what pages
• System tells you what files attached to a design aren't actually being used by that design (also what files are missing)
• Complete server cache control, with a day-by-day report on cache performance (and traffic)
• Alias URLs (useful for marketing campaigns) that are not handled as redirects and are never indexed by Google
• Workflow that can work serially (approver 1, then approver 2, then approver 3, etc.) or in parallel (approvers can approve in any order, or simultaneously)
• The ability to choose a workflow (assuming you have sufficient permissions)
• Versioning, with a timeline (you can't roll back, like in Matrix, but you can view, and export, any previous version of a page as a PDF – much less resource-hungry than full rollback)
• Context-sensitive help

There are a number of interface features that are so appropriate and so beautifully realised that they raise the bar for interface design. Such as:

• Timelines with draggable 'viewports' and changeable scales (day, month, year)
• Task panes (eg: for finding an image) that are part of their parent windows, but appear to be floating in front
• Asset browsers with a (Mac-like) column interface
• A liberal, and appropriate, use of thumbnail snapshots
• A yes/no slider control
• The 'help-pointer': a small, bouncing graphic that shows you exactly where a particular interface widget is, so you can follow steps in the contextual help system

Some of these are so innovative and useful that I expect other software companies will try to copy them.

Criticisms? Very few, and most (if not all) of these are features that Squiz.net just haven't built into mini yet, but are planning to. Such as:

• No safe-editing, meaning that you can't use the approval process workflow on live pages – instead, changes happen immediately
• Only 3 kinds of form inputs: text, pop-up selectors and radio buttons
• No centralised list of current alias URLs
• No calendar, e-commerce or bulk email

Matrix is an undeniably powerful system; however its back-end interface feels complex and crowded, because almost every feature is available at all times. As a result, the controls (especially in the sitemap area) are small and finnicky. In contrast, mini feels clean and spacious, because the interface is focused on what you need to do at that time, but it also makes the context clear (so you always know where you are)

This is indeed the future of CMS.

More information about MySource mini

30 min. video demo (29 Oct 2008)

SmARThistory

Smarthistory.org is one of those rare things on the web: an innovative site that actually works, and is very useful.

Here’s an excerpt from their “About” page:

Smarthistory.org is a free multimedia web-book designed as a dynamic enhancement (or even substitute) for the traditional art history textbook. Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker began smARThistory in 2005 by creating a blog featuring free audio guides in the form of podcasts for use in The Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Soon after, we embedded the audio files in our online survey courses. The response from our students was so positive that we decided to create a multimedia survey of art history web-book. We created audios and videos about works of art found in standard art history survey texts, organized the files stylistically and chronologically, and added text and still images.

Of course it’s not “comprehensive”, but it’s pretty vast nevertheless. It’s all western art and, as far as I can see, mostly from New York collections (which is hardly surprising, considering its origins). But I’m intrigued by the use of video to concentrate on individual works of art. Eg: have a look at the page on Diane Arbus’ Boy with a Toy Hand Grenade - For the first 2 minutes, all you see is the artwork. Then, the photographer’s contact sheet. Then the photograph again but, as the two discuss it, you see their mouse pointer moving around the image. Very simple, basic technology (which produces a slightly annoying trail of tiny, vertical lines) but it does the job.

I also like the way you can explore by time, style, artist and theme.

Also worthy of note is how they have allowed public participation by integrating photos from their own Flickr group.

Is there such a thing as too much navigation?

In Steve Krug's excellent book, Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, he talks about the street signs in LA compared to those in Boston, his home city*. When my wife and I were in the USA last year, I was able to confirm his observations. One street corner in downtown Boston particularly caught my attention:

[* Actually, I believe he lives in Brookline.]

Google Earth meets The Prado

The Sydney Morning Herald published an article today about Google's experiment with The Prado, in Madrid, using the Google Earth application to zoom into 14 of the museum's old master paintings to an amazing degree. Visitors can "crawl across" the surface of the painting and fill their screen with a single brushstroke or fissure. The writer, Richard Jinman talked to me on the phone yesterday to ask for my reaction and some of my responses were quoted (or paraphrased) in the article:

It would be unfeasible for museums to put their entire collections online at such high resolution... zooming in that closely gives you information, but doesn't give you the experience the artist intended... [the artist] wouldn't expect you to look deep inside a brushstroke - it's an almost forensic view of an artwork which would primarily interest scientists and restorers.

What I was getting at is that the extreme closeup that Google Earth offers would be interesting to anyone at first, for a few paintings, but the appeal would probably fade quickly. I think for most purposes and viewers, the level of detail offered by, say, Zoomify, would be more than adequate. Does anyone else have an opinion?

Shameless plug: Marriage celebrant website

Wanda, my nearest and dearest, is a registered civil marriage celebrant. Although I many of her gigs come through word of mouth, having a website seemed like a smart move. So, with a talented designer, Zoë Cooper (who happens to be our daughter), we set about creating one:
www.wandacooper.com.au

It's all standards-compliant of course, so it was a good way to practise – and learn – CSS skills. But its visual elegance is all thanks to Zoë.

Let me know what you think... if you feel like it. :-)