[annotator-dev] Notes on Annotations from seminar

Dan Whaley dwhaley at hypothes.is
Sun Mar 24 01:42:59 UTC 2013


Samuel,

There's a presentation given recently which is available at:
hypothes.is/infocamp

It has screenshots in some of the slides towards the end.  Feel free to use.

Dan

On Mar 23, 2013, at 5:40 PM, Samuel Klein <sjklein at post.harvard.edu> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I'm going to a discussion about annotations in academia next week, and
> would like to give a lightning talk about Annotator and hypothes.is to
> raise awareness.   Are there recent screenshots or mockups I should
> use ?
> 
> SJ
> 
> 
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 1:21 AM, Randall Leeds <tilgovi at hypothes.is> wrote:
>> Sorry for top posting (also, I'm cross-posting to annotator-dev), but
>> you all wrote small novels here.
>> 
>> I'd just add that Hypothes.is is still very much built on top of Annotator.
>> 
>> In the past week I have broken out two plugins: *
>> 
>> - Threading [0]
>>  This implements discussion threading on annotations and has only one
>> outstanding code dependency in the h application that I think I can
>> eliminate by a non-invasive change to Annotator. It requires jwz.js
>> [1] for the `mail.messageThread()` function. The rest is implemented
>> through vanilla Annotator events, though currently the Annotator
>> viewer doesn't know anything about the threads, it could be made to.
>> 
>> - Cross-domain bridge [2]
>>  This lets us implement our UI in an iframe with minimal changes to
>> the main application. It provides an easy way to share annotations
>> between widgets. It depends on jschannel [3]. I'd like to expand it in
>> any way that's helpful. Eventually, this could lead to mashups of
>> annotation tools. There's lightweight extensibility provided through
>> the configuration for fine-grained sharing and merging of annotation
>> properties across browser security domains and windows.
>> 
>> I also just took 15 minutes and proved to myself that I could
>> re-enable the Annotator bubbles with our sidebar on the page as well.
>> It was easy. At this point, most of our code is not overriding
>> Annotator in complex ways anymore, but augmenting it in surgical ways,
>> or overriding methods to simply disable features straight away (such
>> as the editor and viewer widgets). I'll open some issues for making
>> this configurable and for documenting our embed code. We can start to
>> flesh out the integrations.
>> 
>> I'll see what I can do to break our sidebar widget out into a separate
>> plugin as well, so that the embed code can be a normal Annotator embed
>> with a custom plugin config and some additional CSS.
>> 
>> In other words: ** Don't worry so much about designing one right
>> thing. Let's design (and implement) many things. **
>> 
>> You should not view these interfaces, Hypothes.is and vanilla
>> Annotator, as mutually exclusive!
>> 
>> That said, all the feedback is *greatly* appreciated.
>> 
>> So: Yo, dawg. I heard you like annotations, so why don't we get some
>> accounts turned on and we can start annotating some PDFs about
>> annotation interfaces?
>> 
>> -R
>> 
>> * This stuff still needs to bake a little bit and solidify and we'll
>> try to get it all working with upstream Annotator. Everything needs
>> tests. Patches welcome. Offer extends forever.
>> [0] https://github.com/hypothesis/h/blob/develop/h/js/plugin/threading.coffee
>> [1] https://github.com/maxogden/conversationThreading-js
>> [2] https://github.com/hypothesis/h/blob/develop/h/js/plugin/bridge.coffee
>> [3] https://github.com/mozilla/jschannel
>> 
>> On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 7:35 PM, Dan Whaley <dwhaley at hypothes.is> wrote:
>>> Jake,
>>> 
>>> Thanks for taking the time on these notes below, it's really appreciated.
>>> I'll respond inline below and cc this to our dev list for the benefit of
>>> others that are helping us think through these same questions.
>>> 
>>> On Mar 19, 2013, at 4:07 PM, Jacob Hartnell <jake.hartnell at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hey Dan,
>>> 
>>> Here's some of the notes I've pulled together from research I've been doing
>>> over the past couple of days. Forgive me if many of these things are either:
>>> 
>>> Obvious
>>> You already know them
>>> Are part of upcoming plans and just haven't been implemented yet.
>>> Poorly articulated (in which case, I can rephrase them)
>>> 
>>> What you've laid out is actually very clear.  Thank you.
>>> 
>>> At the moment, we are actually still considering using Hypothes.is (there
>>> are certain elements of the UI we prefer, especially for shared
>>> annotations), but I do have some feedback for you.
>>> 
>>> Annotation changes a great deal between use cases: Students in classrooms
>>> will use hypothes.is differently than scientists doing peer review on an
>>> article. In our use case students will be making annotations on top of the
>>> book. As simple as this sounds, it's a bit complicated and that's what I
>>> hope to flush out in this email.
>>> 
>>> In the classroom there are actually two different use cases at hand: private
>>> note taking verses online class discussion. Private note taking is very
>>> different from shared annotation that takes place in class discussion or
>>> collaborative annotation. In From Personal to Shared Annotations (attached),
>>> one of the authors noted, "People often annotate paper documents as they
>>> read them, especially if they are responsible for assimilating the content.
>>> They underline text, write notes in the margins, place asterisks by content
>>> they want to find again, and otherwise create a personal geography of the
>>> reading materials." Other studies have also noticed that the great majority
>>> of personal annotations are simply highlights or underlines.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> (I'll just mention as a side note, that Cathy Marshall, the principal author
>>> of the paper you cite above will be attending and speaking at the workshop
>>> in April.)
>>> 
>>> One of our primary objectives, and our engagement strategies is to design a
>>> high quality personal research tool based around annotations, highlighting,
>>> tagging and so forth.  I believe I mentioned some of this in my presentation
>>> Saturday, but let me point out a few things.
>>> 
>>> 1) We just launched personal annotations to our dev branch last night and
>>> are testing it internally.  We think of this as "visibility".  Personal,
>>> private group or global channel.  Groups will come a bit later this spring
>>> or early summer.
>>> https://github.com/hypothesis/h/wiki/visibility
>>> 
>>> 2) We have a number of additional features targeted at our Personal research
>>> releases A & B on our roadmap.  They include a "my annotations" view,
>>> various sorting and filtering options, PDF support (just launched this
>>> weekend), highlighting and favoriting.  Also, the ability to link to an
>>> annotation.
>>> https://github.com/hypothesis/h/wiki/Roadmap
>>> 
>>> 3) We think we understand some of the key features that people want, because
>>> we've heard others ask for them, or they seem intuitively obvious-- but we'd
>>> love your perspective on this, and any further guidance you have to offer.
>>> We know we haven't thought of everything-- far from it.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I think there's a difference between annotations as reading and annotations
>>> as writing. When participating in discussion around an area of the text,
>>> more thought is put into a post. Private annotations are different, and I
>>> think Hypothes.is should equally address them as well as it doesn't shared
>>> annotations (since annotations can easily move from private to shared).
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Completely agree. :)
>>> 
>>> I'd even go further:  We *won't* succeed unless we are also a high quality
>>> personal research tool.  And yes, per the below-- you'll be able to toggle
>>> visibility.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> UI notes:
>>> 
>>> The UI doesn't support highlighting very well. Obviously, for the overall
>>> mission of hypothes.is this isn't as important as the discussions but for
>>> use in our application it's really important. A lot of students highlight
>>> without making a comment. In addition, this is not necessarily content that
>>> students want to share (except to show in aggregate, perhaps like the Kindle
>>> does—"122 people highlighted this passage").
>>> 
>>> Highlighting is covered under linking here-- though it may need its own
>>> stub.  There are some sketches, a few  contributed by a recent volunteer,
>>> Abel, that we haven't fully assimilated ourselves… not finished by any
>>> means.
>>> https://github.com/hypothesis/h/wiki/Linking-to-an-annotation
>>> 
>>> There needs to be a private annotation mode. Moreover, it should be easy to
>>> switch between private and shared annotations. It also should be optimized
>>> for the differences between personal annotation and shared annotation.
>>> 
>>> One of the reasons we've leaned towards annotator, is that while the layout
>>> isn't as optimized for shared annotation and discussion, it's better suited
>>> towards private annotation, and allows us to support both… though it's also
>>> far from ideal in this regard.
>>> 
>>> We don't think of it as being in a mode, we think of creating annotations
>>> that have different visibilities.  You can take a previously private
>>> annotation and toggle it to globally visible.  That may be a one-directional
>>> move?
>>> 
>>> Better support/UI integration for different annotation flavors: comments and
>>> highlights.
>>> 
>>> Students don't always attach a comment to a text selection.
>>> 
>>> Yes, this is targeted for the "advanced editing" set of features on the
>>> Roadmap.
>>> 
>>> (I'll just say here that the feature sets on the roadmap are just
>>> approximate groupings of related elements for the purpose of organization--
>>> in actuality, we'll gather elements from these various groups into releases
>>> as we move forward.)
>>> 
>>> Especially while reading, most students only highlight with no comments.
>>> 
>>> Check out the highlight feature in Mac OSX Mountain Lion Preview, maybe in
>>> "private mode," annotations could support highlighting with different a
>>> similar workflow.
>>> 
>>> Highlighting, per above.  Happy to review different design approaches.
>>> 
>>> Different color highlights need to be easily supported.
>>> 
>>> Sure.  Color might be a kind of tag that carries a style with it.
>>> 
>>> Tagging also needs to be easily supported, our experiment relies a lot on
>>> the ability to use tags. Annotator has this functionality which is one of
>>> the reasons we were considering using it over Hypothes.is.
>>> 
>>> "Advanced editing" on the roadmap.  Again, anything in annotator is already
>>> available to hypothes.is at the storage layer.  Thus, the only thing that
>>> needs to be created is the UI to support it.  This is not too terribly much
>>> work, but we need to think through exactly the approach we want to take.
>>> 
>>> For example, we wanted to have a "flag" tag. If you flag a portion of the
>>> text there is something wrong with it. Either, it's not useful, unclear, or
>>> contains an error. This data is not shared with the class and used to help
>>> improve the textbook.
>>> 
>>> Our thinking is that this goes in a "moderation release".  We have some
>>> really rough early mockups.  Flagging we imagine might be highly
>>> customizable.
>>> 
>>> Students in classrooms will use hypothes.is differently than scientists
>>> doing peer review on an article. Permissions need to be an essential part of
>>> the flow. It needs to be easy to switch between personal and shared modes.]
>>> 
>>> Seamless.
>>> 
>>> There also needs to be an easy way to create, join, and switch between
>>> shared annotation groups. (Obviously you are working on the group
>>> functionality)
>>> 
>>> Groups. Yep.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Here are some other things I've found in some articles I've read lately
>>> (I've attached them to the document and highlighted some interesting
>>> passages). I think Hypothes.is does a pretty good job of addressing them,
>>> but there's always room for improvement. [My thoughts are in brackets.]
>>> These come from section 6.4 of the Annotation thesis I attached.
>>> 
>>> Developers should focus on designing annotation systems that present the
>>> best, most productive annotations rather than attempting to display all
>>> annotations made (Wolfe, 2008). [It should be easy to switch between
>>> different modes (private, group, top-rated, everyone)]
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Yes, this lumps together very distinct concepts though:  private & group
>>> modes are visibility related, "top-rated" is a sort criteria on what you can
>>> see.  everyone is the third visiibility parameter… i call it the global
>>> channel.
>>> 
>>> ON/OFF: Participants expressed the view that it is absolutely critical that
>>> readers could turn the annotations off very quickly and easily, perhaps in
>>> one single click.
>>> 
>>> Once we launch the extension this week or early next, you will see that even
>>> the sidebar is not active until the extension page action icon is clicked.
>>> i.e. We agree.
>>> 
>>> This functionality should also probably be reflected somehow in an
>>> embeddable version of annotation, without the extension-- maybe simply via
>>> an icon or other element of the web page we're embedded on.
>>> 
>>> It would also be important to have the annotations turned off by default,
>>> because annotated texts distract the readers, especially the first-time
>>> readers. [Though the heat map and the pointers are cool and fairly
>>> unobtrusive on a website, in a book they can still be annoying/distracting.
>>> Perhaps by clicking on the discussion box icon they can be toggled on/off.
>>> Every reader is different, but this bothers some people. Usually, people
>>> want to read an article or chapter first AND THEN check and see what others
>>> are saying about it.]
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Yes, per above.
>>> 
>>> DON'T HAVE TOO MUCH ON SCREEN: In their study of annotation layouts,
>>> Zellweger, Regli, Mackinlay, and Chang (2000) found that many readers
>>> objected to annotations that interrupted the flow of the primary text.
>>> Cabanac et al. (2005; 2007) moreover noted that interlinear annotations may
>>> potentially be confused with the primary text. [You guys do a pretty great
>>> job at this!]
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Thank you. :)
>>> 
>>> Keep sending me questions and I'll do my best to find answers and opinions
>>> on them. In general, the feedback to hypothes.is has been really positive!
>>> It's exciting to watch the progress on it.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Great!
>>> 
>>> I'm really glad there's an opportunity to work together.
>>> 
>>> Sincerely,
>>> 
>>> Jake
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> <p812-marshall.pdf>
>>> 
>>> 
>>> <AnnotationThesis2010.pdf>
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> annotator-dev mailing list
>> annotator-dev at lists.okfn.org
>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/annotator-dev
>> Unsubscribe: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/annotator-dev
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Samuel Klein          @metasj          w:user:sj          +1 617 529 4266
> 
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 1:21 AM, Randall Leeds <tilgovi at hypothes.is> wrote:
>> Sorry for top posting (also, I'm cross-posting to annotator-dev), but
>> you all wrote small novels here.
>> 
>> I'd just add that Hypothes.is is still very much built on top of Annotator.
>> 
>> In the past week I have broken out two plugins: *
>> 
>> - Threading [0]
>>  This implements discussion threading on annotations and has only one
>> outstanding code dependency in the h application that I think I can
>> eliminate by a non-invasive change to Annotator. It requires jwz.js
>> [1] for the `mail.messageThread()` function. The rest is implemented
>> through vanilla Annotator events, though currently the Annotator
>> viewer doesn't know anything about the threads, it could be made to.
>> 
>> - Cross-domain bridge [2]
>>  This lets us implement our UI in an iframe with minimal changes to
>> the main application. It provides an easy way to share annotations
>> between widgets. It depends on jschannel [3]. I'd like to expand it in
>> any way that's helpful. Eventually, this could lead to mashups of
>> annotation tools. There's lightweight extensibility provided through
>> the configuration for fine-grained sharing and merging of annotation
>> properties across browser security domains and windows.
>> 
>> I also just took 15 minutes and proved to myself that I could
>> re-enable the Annotator bubbles with our sidebar on the page as well.
>> It was easy. At this point, most of our code is not overriding
>> Annotator in complex ways anymore, but augmenting it in surgical ways,
>> or overriding methods to simply disable features straight away (such
>> as the editor and viewer widgets). I'll open some issues for making
>> this configurable and for documenting our embed code. We can start to
>> flesh out the integrations.
>> 
>> I'll see what I can do to break our sidebar widget out into a separate
>> plugin as well, so that the embed code can be a normal Annotator embed
>> with a custom plugin config and some additional CSS.
>> 
>> In other words: ** Don't worry so much about designing one right
>> thing. Let's design (and implement) many things. **
>> 
>> You should not view these interfaces, Hypothes.is and vanilla
>> Annotator, as mutually exclusive!
>> 
>> That said, all the feedback is *greatly* appreciated.
>> 
>> So: Yo, dawg. I heard you like annotations, so why don't we get some
>> accounts turned on and we can start annotating some PDFs about
>> annotation interfaces?
>> 
>> -R
>> 
>> * This stuff still needs to bake a little bit and solidify and we'll
>> try to get it all working with upstream Annotator. Everything needs
>> tests. Patches welcome. Offer extends forever.
>> [0] https://github.com/hypothesis/h/blob/develop/h/js/plugin/threading.coffee
>> [1] https://github.com/maxogden/conversationThreading-js
>> [2] https://github.com/hypothesis/h/blob/develop/h/js/plugin/bridge.coffee
>> [3] https://github.com/mozilla/jschannel
>> 
>> On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 7:35 PM, Dan Whaley <dwhaley at hypothes.is> wrote:
>>> Jake,
>>> 
>>> Thanks for taking the time on these notes below, it's really appreciated.
>>> I'll respond inline below and cc this to our dev list for the benefit of
>>> others that are helping us think through these same questions.
>>> 
>>> On Mar 19, 2013, at 4:07 PM, Jacob Hartnell <jake.hartnell at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hey Dan,
>>> 
>>> Here's some of the notes I've pulled together from research I've been doing
>>> over the past couple of days. Forgive me if many of these things are either:
>>> 
>>> Obvious
>>> You already know them
>>> Are part of upcoming plans and just haven't been implemented yet.
>>> Poorly articulated (in which case, I can rephrase them)
>>> 
>>> What you've laid out is actually very clear.  Thank you.
>>> 
>>> At the moment, we are actually still considering using Hypothes.is (there
>>> are certain elements of the UI we prefer, especially for shared
>>> annotations), but I do have some feedback for you.
>>> 
>>> Annotation changes a great deal between use cases: Students in classrooms
>>> will use hypothes.is differently than scientists doing peer review on an
>>> article. In our use case students will be making annotations on top of the
>>> book. As simple as this sounds, it's a bit complicated and that's what I
>>> hope to flush out in this email.
>>> 
>>> In the classroom there are actually two different use cases at hand: private
>>> note taking verses online class discussion. Private note taking is very
>>> different from shared annotation that takes place in class discussion or
>>> collaborative annotation. In From Personal to Shared Annotations (attached),
>>> one of the authors noted, "People often annotate paper documents as they
>>> read them, especially if they are responsible for assimilating the content.
>>> They underline text, write notes in the margins, place asterisks by content
>>> they want to find again, and otherwise create a personal geography of the
>>> reading materials." Other studies have also noticed that the great majority
>>> of personal annotations are simply highlights or underlines.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> (I'll just mention as a side note, that Cathy Marshall, the principal author
>>> of the paper you cite above will be attending and speaking at the workshop
>>> in April.)
>>> 
>>> One of our primary objectives, and our engagement strategies is to design a
>>> high quality personal research tool based around annotations, highlighting,
>>> tagging and so forth.  I believe I mentioned some of this in my presentation
>>> Saturday, but let me point out a few things.
>>> 
>>> 1) We just launched personal annotations to our dev branch last night and
>>> are testing it internally.  We think of this as "visibility".  Personal,
>>> private group or global channel.  Groups will come a bit later this spring
>>> or early summer.
>>> https://github.com/hypothesis/h/wiki/visibility
>>> 
>>> 2) We have a number of additional features targeted at our Personal research
>>> releases A & B on our roadmap.  They include a "my annotations" view,
>>> various sorting and filtering options, PDF support (just launched this
>>> weekend), highlighting and favoriting.  Also, the ability to link to an
>>> annotation.
>>> https://github.com/hypothesis/h/wiki/Roadmap
>>> 
>>> 3) We think we understand some of the key features that people want, because
>>> we've heard others ask for them, or they seem intuitively obvious-- but we'd
>>> love your perspective on this, and any further guidance you have to offer.
>>> We know we haven't thought of everything-- far from it.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I think there's a difference between annotations as reading and annotations
>>> as writing. When participating in discussion around an area of the text,
>>> more thought is put into a post. Private annotations are different, and I
>>> think Hypothes.is should equally address them as well as it doesn't shared
>>> annotations (since annotations can easily move from private to shared).
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Completely agree. :)
>>> 
>>> I'd even go further:  We *won't* succeed unless we are also a high quality
>>> personal research tool.  And yes, per the below-- you'll be able to toggle
>>> visibility.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> UI notes:
>>> 
>>> The UI doesn't support highlighting very well. Obviously, for the overall
>>> mission of hypothes.is this isn't as important as the discussions but for
>>> use in our application it's really important. A lot of students highlight
>>> without making a comment. In addition, this is not necessarily content that
>>> students want to share (except to show in aggregate, perhaps like the Kindle
>>> does—"122 people highlighted this passage").
>>> 
>>> Highlighting is covered under linking here-- though it may need its own
>>> stub.  There are some sketches, a few  contributed by a recent volunteer,
>>> Abel, that we haven't fully assimilated ourselves… not finished by any
>>> means.
>>> https://github.com/hypothesis/h/wiki/Linking-to-an-annotation
>>> 
>>> There needs to be a private annotation mode. Moreover, it should be easy to
>>> switch between private and shared annotations. It also should be optimized
>>> for the differences between personal annotation and shared annotation.
>>> 
>>> One of the reasons we've leaned towards annotator, is that while the layout
>>> isn't as optimized for shared annotation and discussion, it's better suited
>>> towards private annotation, and allows us to support both… though it's also
>>> far from ideal in this regard.
>>> 
>>> We don't think of it as being in a mode, we think of creating annotations
>>> that have different visibilities.  You can take a previously private
>>> annotation and toggle it to globally visible.  That may be a one-directional
>>> move?
>>> 
>>> Better support/UI integration for different annotation flavors: comments and
>>> highlights.
>>> 
>>> Students don't always attach a comment to a text selection.
>>> 
>>> Yes, this is targeted for the "advanced editing" set of features on the
>>> Roadmap.
>>> 
>>> (I'll just say here that the feature sets on the roadmap are just
>>> approximate groupings of related elements for the purpose of organization--
>>> in actuality, we'll gather elements from these various groups into releases
>>> as we move forward.)
>>> 
>>> Especially while reading, most students only highlight with no comments.
>>> 
>>> Check out the highlight feature in Mac OSX Mountain Lion Preview, maybe in
>>> "private mode," annotations could support highlighting with different a
>>> similar workflow.
>>> 
>>> Highlighting, per above.  Happy to review different design approaches.
>>> 
>>> Different color highlights need to be easily supported.
>>> 
>>> Sure.  Color might be a kind of tag that carries a style with it.
>>> 
>>> Tagging also needs to be easily supported, our experiment relies a lot on
>>> the ability to use tags. Annotator has this functionality which is one of
>>> the reasons we were considering using it over Hypothes.is.
>>> 
>>> "Advanced editing" on the roadmap.  Again, anything in annotator is already
>>> available to hypothes.is at the storage layer.  Thus, the only thing that
>>> needs to be created is the UI to support it.  This is not too terribly much
>>> work, but we need to think through exactly the approach we want to take.
>>> 
>>> For example, we wanted to have a "flag" tag. If you flag a portion of the
>>> text there is something wrong with it. Either, it's not useful, unclear, or
>>> contains an error. This data is not shared with the class and used to help
>>> improve the textbook.
>>> 
>>> Our thinking is that this goes in a "moderation release".  We have some
>>> really rough early mockups.  Flagging we imagine might be highly
>>> customizable.
>>> 
>>> Students in classrooms will use hypothes.is differently than scientists
>>> doing peer review on an article. Permissions need to be an essential part of
>>> the flow. It needs to be easy to switch between personal and shared modes.]
>>> 
>>> Seamless.
>>> 
>>> There also needs to be an easy way to create, join, and switch between
>>> shared annotation groups. (Obviously you are working on the group
>>> functionality)
>>> 
>>> Groups. Yep.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Here are some other things I've found in some articles I've read lately
>>> (I've attached them to the document and highlighted some interesting
>>> passages). I think Hypothes.is does a pretty good job of addressing them,
>>> but there's always room for improvement. [My thoughts are in brackets.]
>>> These come from section 6.4 of the Annotation thesis I attached.
>>> 
>>> Developers should focus on designing annotation systems that present the
>>> best, most productive annotations rather than attempting to display all
>>> annotations made (Wolfe, 2008). [It should be easy to switch between
>>> different modes (private, group, top-rated, everyone)]
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Yes, this lumps together very distinct concepts though:  private & group
>>> modes are visibility related, "top-rated" is a sort criteria on what you can
>>> see.  everyone is the third visiibility parameter… i call it the global
>>> channel.
>>> 
>>> ON/OFF: Participants expressed the view that it is absolutely critical that
>>> readers could turn the annotations off very quickly and easily, perhaps in
>>> one single click.
>>> 
>>> Once we launch the extension this week or early next, you will see that even
>>> the sidebar is not active until the extension page action icon is clicked.
>>> i.e. We agree.
>>> 
>>> This functionality should also probably be reflected somehow in an
>>> embeddable version of annotation, without the extension-- maybe simply via
>>> an icon or other element of the web page we're embedded on.
>>> 
>>> It would also be important to have the annotations turned off by default,
>>> because annotated texts distract the readers, especially the first-time
>>> readers. [Though the heat map and the pointers are cool and fairly
>>> unobtrusive on a website, in a book they can still be annoying/distracting.
>>> Perhaps by clicking on the discussion box icon they can be toggled on/off.
>>> Every reader is different, but this bothers some people. Usually, people
>>> want to read an article or chapter first AND THEN check and see what others
>>> are saying about it.]
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Yes, per above.
>>> 
>>> DON'T HAVE TOO MUCH ON SCREEN: In their study of annotation layouts,
>>> Zellweger, Regli, Mackinlay, and Chang (2000) found that many readers
>>> objected to annotations that interrupted the flow of the primary text.
>>> Cabanac et al. (2005; 2007) moreover noted that interlinear annotations may
>>> potentially be confused with the primary text. [You guys do a pretty great
>>> job at this!]
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Thank you. :)
>>> 
>>> Keep sending me questions and I'll do my best to find answers and opinions
>>> on them. In general, the feedback to hypothes.is has been really positive!
>>> It's exciting to watch the progress on it.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Great!
>>> 
>>> I'm really glad there's an opportunity to work together.
>>> 
>>> Sincerely,
>>> 
>>> Jake
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> <p812-marshall.pdf>
>>> 
>>> 
>>> <AnnotationThesis2010.pdf>
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> annotator-dev mailing list
>> annotator-dev at lists.okfn.org
>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/annotator-dev
>> Unsubscribe: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/annotator-dev
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Samuel Klein          @metasj           w:user:sj          +1 617 529 4266
> --
> To unsubscribe, send an email to dev+unsubscribe at list.hypothes.is
> 





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