Delving Deeper Hypertext Online

[waysoftheearth]

The (alpha) Delving Deeper Reference Rules Hypertext document is now online here:


ddo.immersiveink.com/dd.html


Thanks especially to Peter Fröhlich and Ramanan Sivaranjan for their technical advise along the way. In fact the CSS is very largely Peter's work--although the present colour scheme is my fault alone


It works and is useful as it is, but I know there's still a lot to do including:

* A nice Table of Contents,
* Breaking it up into multiple, smaller/faster loading parts,
* Polishing the tables,
* And fixing a whole bunch of funny links.


So if you spot any issues please comment so I can get around to fixxxxing evvvverythinnngg!


In the meanwhile, enjoy your Delving Deeper Online!

[Merctime]

This is just awesome! I can't wait to be able to devote some time reading this. It will be neat to have a look at the changes from version 3. Seems pretty handy for table-topping as a reference, too, although I can't wait for the hardback myself

Thanks to all involved!!

[waysoftheearth]

Jul 28, 2014 16:23:59 GMT -6 Merctime said:

This is just awesome!It will be neat to have a look at the changes from version 3.

Thanks Merctime,

FYI--I've already posted a running tally of the changes on the G+ Group, but I will also produce a stand alone document where it's all final. That will be the moment that the POD hard copy becomes available, and that will be shortly after I get the new cover art

[Merctime]

Great! I'll have to head over to G+ and have a look. Can't wait to see the cover art!

[Deleted]

Jul 28, 2014 5:48:06 GMT -6 waysoftheearth said:

The (alpha) Delving Deeper Reference Rules Hypertext document is now online here:


ddo.immersiveink.com/dd.html


Thanks especially to Peter Fröhlich and Ramanan Sivaranjan for their technical advise along the way. In fact the CSS is very largely Peter's work--although the present colour scheme is my fault alone


It works and is useful as it is, but I know there's still a lot to do including:

* A nice Table of Contents,
* Breaking it up into multiple, smaller/faster loading parts,
* Polishing the tables,
* And fixing a whole bunch of funny links.


So if you spot any issues please comment so I can get around to fixxxxing evvvverythinnngg!


In the meanwhile, enjoy your Delving Deeper Online!

While an index would be great, I love the format as it is. If you do break in up on multiple pages, I hope you leave the current one continuous page up as a alternate, since for me that is a much easier way to use it than multiple pages.

[waysoftheearth]

Jul 31, 2014 13:25:46 GMT -6 @theperilousdreamer said:

While an index would be great, I love the format as it is. If you do break in up on multiple pages, I hope you leave the current one continuous page up as a alternate, since for me that is a much easier way to use it than multiple pages.

Hey @theperilousdreamer, thanks for your remarks.

I'm interested to know about your particular use cases where you believe a) an index would be helpful, and b) where one long, continuous document would be better than several smaller parts... as far as I can tell:

a) An index is perhaps not as useful in the online format as it is in hardcopy, because the entire hypertext document is already searchable in the browser.

E.g., if you hit CTRL+F (on a Windows machine) and start typing your search term, the browser will immediately scroll to the first instance of your term, and also allow you to hop through all its instances. If your search term happens to be hyperlinked, you can immediately click thru that link and arrive at the most pertinent section of the text for your search term.

On the other hand, if there were a hyperlinked index, you would instead have to search the index for your term, then click thru that link (in the index) to arrive at the most pertinent text (in the document) for your search term.

One added piece of value I do see in an index, however, is that if there are multiple definitions of a single term (e.g., Light: a) mundane illumination, b) visibility, c) effect on possibility of surprise, c) magic-user spell, d) cleric spell), then it's possible to see all these lined up in one place (the index).

b) Multiple documents instead of one huge one should, ideally, improve the user experience by reducing the load time of the individual parts. This would be especially relevant for users with limited bandwidth and/or processing power (especially mobile device users).

Theoretically, clicking thru links that join the multiple document-parts should be an identical (if not better) experience to clicking thru links within one giant document. The benefit of multiple document-parts is that you only need to download the sub-parts of the document you actually want to view. E.g., it may be frustrating to have to wait for the entire document and all the tables to download just so you can look up a magic sword table, for example.

However, the benefit of a single huge document is that you can use browser's search feature across the whole text at once. So having a single huge document kinda sorta means I don't need to go to the trouble of doing an index--at least not immediately!


Having said all that; there's still a truck load of work to do on the tables, so I don't see the single document offering going away any time soon

[derv]

Seems very handy as an on-line reference Ways.

One thing that occur when I view the page, that may be my browser or something, is that certain words are over printed others. If no one else has the issue, it must be on my end.

For instance, under Common Terms, all the terms being defined are printed over with the definition. I cannot actually read the terms that are being defined.

[waysoftheearth]

Jul 31, 2014 17:50:24 GMT -6 derv said:

under Common Terms, all the terms being defined are printed over with the definition. I cannot actually read the terms that are being defined.

This is to do with CSS margins and run ins.

I've tested it in Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and IE. I know it doesn't work on old versions of IE (7 and 8), but it works in all the other browsers I've tried.

My guess is you are using an old or obscure browser that doesn't have modern CSS support.

Which browser are you using?

[derv]

Jul 31, 2014 18:02:13 GMT -6 waysoftheearth said:

My guess is you are using an old or obscure browser that doesn't have modern CSS support.

Which browser are you using?

IE9

You're probably right. It's probably IE.

[waysoftheearth]

Jul 31, 2014 18:27:20 GMT -6 derv said:

It's probably IE.

You could try it in another browser (e.g., Chrome, Firefox) to confirm this.

[Deleted]

Jul 31, 2014 17:26:36 GMT -6 waysoftheearth said:

Jul 31, 2014 13:25:46 GMT -6 @theperilousdreamer said:

While an index would be great, I love the format as it is. If you do break in up on multiple pages, I hope you leave the current one continuous page up as a alternate, since for me that is a much easier way to use it than multiple pages.

Hey @theperilousdreamer, thanks for your remarks.

I'm interested to know about your particular use cases where you believe a) an index would be helpful, and b) where one long, continuous document would be better than several smaller parts... as far as I can tell:

a) An index is perhaps not as useful in the online format as it is in hardcopy, because the entire hypertext document is already searchable in the browser.

E.g., if you hit CTRL+F (on a Windows machine) and start typing your search term, the browser will immediately scroll to the first instance of your term, and also allow you to hop through all its instances. If your search term happens to be hyperlinked, you can immediately click thru that link and arrive at the most pertinent section of the text for your search term.

On the other hand, if there were a hyperlinked index, you would instead have to search the index for your term, then click thru that link (in the index) to arrive at the most pertinent text (in the document) for your search term.

One added piece of value I do see in an index, however, is that if there are multiple definitions of a single term (e.g., Light: a) mundane illumination, b) visibility, c) effect on possibility of surprise, c) magic-user spell, d) cleric spell), then it's possible to see all these lined up in one place (the index).

The last option noted is to me the benefit of the index where all of the references are together.

Jul 31, 2014 17:26:36 GMT -6 waysoftheearth said:

b) Multiple documents instead of one huge one should, ideally, improve the user experience by reducing the load time of the individual parts. This would be especially relevant for users with limited bandwidth and/or processing power (especially mobile device users).

Theoretically, clicking thru links that join the multiple document-parts should be an identical (if not better) experience to clicking thru links within one giant document. The benefit of multiple document-parts is that you only need to download the sub-parts of the document you actually want to view. E.g., it may be frustrating to have to wait for the entire document and all the tables to download just so you can look up a magic sword table, for example.

However, the benefit of a single huge document is that you can use browser's search feature across the whole text at once. So having a single huge document kinda sorta means I don't need to go to the trouble of doing an index--at least not immediately!


Having said all that; there's still a truck load of work to do on the tables, so I don't see the single document offering going away any time soon

The load times did not occur to me, since I am lucky enough to have a fairly fast connection. But here is an example of why not having the info all on one page makes it too frustrating to even contemplate using, this is of course an extreme example but all too common across the internet. See the Dragonsfoot Spell Library with 404 spells, but it is only possible to look at one spell at a time, where for me to use it I would like to be able to see the entire expanded list with descriptions, but to look at 404 spells one at a time, it will never happen.

I could handle in your case say one chapter per page but breaking it down smaller than that for me is just going to make me go elsewhere, or in the DF Spell Library, at least let me see 25 or more expanded spells with descriptions per page.

[funkaoshi]

I'm also partial to one long page. You should make the headings all anchors so they can be hyperlinked to. (I can / should help with that.) 400k is basically a blip for most people on the Internet now.

[makofan]

This is so awesome that my current megadungeon under construction that was going to use house-ruled OD&D will now use DD

[Koren n'Rhys]

I vote to keep it a single page as well. IMO, loading time shouldn't be an issue in this day and age. As a simple hypertext page with virtually no images it should be loading almost instantly, even on a phone or older computer.

[Merctime]

My old lappy is a real pig, with a single gig of ram. It loads that page just fine, I should say! I'm loving this as a resource... But I've said this already. And waysoftheearth, the work that you've done to clean up some of the formatting is already evident to me right away. Thank you very much for that! I really consider this a serious go-to document for those of us who can't gain access to the original TSR D&D materials. What a fantastic offering!