The pages I will be redesigning were made by Mafalda Stasi of the CWRL to embody the vision of Madelyn Starbuck's honoria in ciberspazio project. The pages do not meet many of my criteria for a good website. The reader is not oriented, is not offered any structure or navigational guidance, and is left at loss with an abundance of poorly organized content. On the other hand it is important to note that the colors and backgrounds are not unpleasant and, as I found out via an interview with Madelyn, they are at least intended to maintain a theme. But, while beautiful colors are an important part of a website, they can not by themselves create a site that is informative, useful, or even sensical. Good design must work harmoniously with exemplary content for a website to reach excellence. Feel free to visit the old site at http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~slatin/opera which has been redeveloped by Madelyn since this paper was written. Not all the points made in this paper were addressed, but many of the important ones have been attended to. My own redo of the page, as yet unfinished and linkless, can be found at http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~opera.

The ciberspazio project is intended to be a new and provocative brand of opera, at least in theory. The three-sentence introduction at the top of the front page tells me it is "a collaborative cyberspace opera." Apparently Madelyn -- an older woman and a flamboyant artist -- collected (it only says "..we asked everyone who saw this page to send in...") some unspecified number of "rhymed couplets of poetry based on concepts or quotes from the story" from participants who perhaps drifted onto the site from, I'm assuming, all over the world (it does say "worldwide effort" but what sort of effort I'm not sure). These pieces of poetry that were "sent to the opera from cybercitizens" were then compiled, "...set to music and incorporated into a real opera...", presumably by Madelyn, in a libretto, or script. The blurb tells me that the "first reading" took place in December at the home of author Alluquere "Sandy" Stone.

If my description sounds vague, halting, and ill-informed then you've encountered my first and most important critique of the site: it lacks descriptive information. I can't find out much about the project at all. That is not to say it lacks content. In the pages of the website you can see pictures, review the script, hear music samples, read character descriptions, learn about lighting and blocking, and so forth -- but there is no description of what it all means. What in the world is a "cyberspace opera?" Who are the mysterious "cybercitizens" that composed it? What happened? Where is the explanation of the vision, the process? What makes this an important site, the opera an important experiment? Information that describes to the reader what she is seeing -- meta-information if you like -- is the most critical aspect of a website. With no established context any information the reader encounters is rendered senseless.

For example, imagine if you opened a page that had the title "Garfield Lives" but nothing on it except a handful of links called "Red," "Blue," "Green," "White," and "Colorless." The background is gorgeous, the buttons are fully rendered spheres with abstract designs etched into them as if by a Japanese artist working with ivory, and a Plug-In plays a haunting flute melody as the pictures load. Granted that it is beautiful and skillfully laid out, but you are probably nevertheless completely at loss. The sensation might be as if coming onto the site in medius res even when you are certain it is the first page that you are seeing. The solution to the problem is simple: the author should include a paragraph of text explaining what the site is, perhaps its goals, what the links mean and where they go, and so forth. If this page began with a header "Magic: The Gathering -- A Fantasy Trading Card Game by Richard Garfield" and a blurb explaining that the page will talk about "land cards and the color of mana they produce" you are suddenly oriented, given a context, and while you might not feel entirely educated (what is 'mana' anyway?) you can at least understand what you are seeing.

But beyond its lack of orienting information the ciberspazio pages are also useless navigationally. In other words, the reader not only has very little idea of where she is, but also has very little idea of where she can go. In the middle of the page there is a title, below it the three-sentence description as I mentioned and quoted above, then three links. Link are hot spots or buttons a reader can trigger to move between available texts. The first link is called "Story Characters Acts and Music," the second is called "Libretto," and the last is a mailto, a button that helps the user send email to whatever address is included in the HTML. These links are almost hilarious. The first one leads to a gigantic page containing ninety percent of the site divided into subcategories with anchors, or buttons that hop between marked sections in a long documents. It would be far easier if the document were broken into a handful of smaller ones to reduce the time spent downloading and to better establish the separations.

The second, "libretto," button is given without explanation, but points to the opera's script, one long page of approximately 30 screens offered without comment or annotation. Certainly there should be some preparative information to this work, which itself could be engaging if the reader knew what it was she read. Such a long document could also benefit from being broken down, perhaps into acts, and peppered with small graphics to help guide and focus the reader. According to Madelyn the various bits of the libretto are written by different people, and this collaboration is one of the more interesting aspects of the project. It would be satisfying if the reader could click on a piece of text to see information on the author, or even a the author's homepage.

The last link, the mailto, is redundant to an identical mailto found at the foot of the page. The rest of the front page is dominated by a large "ACCEPTABLE USE" policy with thanks to author Bruce Sterling. I found the Acceptable Use statement very funny in light of the fact I had exactly no idea what it was I would be using, or how I would be using it. The last sentence of the policy includes the statement "Thanks to Bruce Sterling for inspiration and for support" which seemed to be nothing but name-dropping because there was no further information.

However, again, it is important to say that the site is not a total failure in terms of its design. The colors are agreeable: the contrast is good, the links are a dark dried- blood red, very flashy and dramatic, and I found out from Madelyn that the pale patterning on the background are tiled gondola-shapes, which fits the theme of the opera. (The main character is searching for a fulfillment to her dream of owning a gondola, after all.) While hard to find nested in the mass of the other documents the pictures are cute, bright, and full of character. The text is well-written, the story is fun, and the content speaks of accomplished skill with multimedia (sounds, video). The site is not pretentious or overbearing, it is conversational and entertaining. It really only needs a reorganization, better links, better description, a clarification of its purpose, and more signposts along the paths the reader might choose to take through the material.

A website is more than just a collage of tidbits. The author is not just responsible for a readable and aesthetic site, but also one that feels whole and is comprehensible. The opera website has superior and inviting content, but without explanation and guidance the reader is only left confused and wondering. The design of a site must work concordantly with its content for it to achieve excellence.