Editorial, v1n3, Reflections on Water

volume 1, number 3; June/2000

Since we launched Reflections on Water webbish contacts have forwarded avant guard sites to my attention. Some snap and crackle. Most of them slide and zoom. Many are too busy for my personal taste, like grown-up, technically complex versions of the sort of pages you get when you expose a typical Grade 6 class to a clipart selection of cool animated gifs. But I am not immune to the seduction of the new media.
Like everyone else out there I am learning new software. Once it was good enough to understand HTML. Now you need to 'grok' timelines and layers. New media also makes greater demands on the receiver as viewers find they need plug-ins, updated browsers, sound cards or faster connections.
Building Reflections on Water this issue (with the help of my student assistant Susan Bussieres) while pursuing Fireworks 3.0 and Flash 4.0 for my own professional development, I realized just how much the technology we are using for the journal is yesterday's miracle. Is it time to vamp it up, I wondered.
Well, maybe, but not this issue. And never at the expense of making it inaccessible. It was in that spirit that I retained an HTML version for prose when I brought in the JAVA reader that gives readers control of font size and paging.
So while I don't preclude the idea of growing in the new media direction, I have decided not to be intimidated into it. ROW's principle audience, after all, is the Northern Interior of BC and last time I looked adequate internet access was still an unsolved problem. I am pleased by the response we've received from contributors and readers (although I have got to find a way to entice more of the verbal and personal e-mail kind onto the site's pages), and remain happy with the low-key, uncluttered look of the journal.
Any brave new steps taken will be dealt with as auxiliary or come with alternative access solutions .... which reminds me, yes, we are puttering away getting ROW's images ALT tagged.

Hey, nobody's perfect.


	Lynda Williams						volume 1, number 3; June/2000 Since we launched Reflections on Water webbish contacts have forwarded avant guard sites to my attention. Some snap and crackle. Most of them slide and zoom. Many are too busy for my personal taste, like grown-up, technically complex versions of the sort of pages you get when you expose a typical Grade 6 class to a clipart selection of cool animated gifs. But I am not immune to the seduction of the new media. Like everyone else out there I am learning new software. Once it was good enough to understand HTML. Now you need to 'grok' timelines and layers. New media also makes greater demands on the receiver as viewers find they need plug-ins, updated browsers, sound cards or faster connections. Building Reflections on Water this issue (with the help of my student assistant Susan Bussieres) while pursuing Fireworks 3.0 and Flash 4.0 for my own professional development, I realized just how much the technology we are using for the journal is yesterday's miracle. Is it time to vamp it up, I wondered. Well, maybe, but not this issue. And never at the expense of making it inaccessible. It was in that spirit that I retained an HTML version for prose when I brought in the JAVA reader that gives readers control of font size and paging. So while I don't preclude the idea of growing in the new media direction, I have decided not to be intimidated into it. ROW's principle audience, after all, is the Northern Interior of BC and last time I looked adequate internet access was still an unsolved problem. I am pleased by the response we've received from contributors and readers (although I have got to find a way to entice more of the verbal and personal e-mail kind onto the site's pages), and remain happy with the low-key, uncluttered look of the journal. Any brave new steps taken will be dealt with as auxiliary or come with alternative access solutions .... which reminds me, yes, we are puttering away getting ROW's images ALT tagged. Hey, nobody's perfect.