[wp-hackers] [OT] Testing needed for WordTrails plugin from Xerox

[Mike Schinkel]

Hi Venkatesh,

Thanks for commenting on the list. It's nice to hear the background as  
to why your team built the WordTrails plugin.

But don't be too discouraged by the negative comments. It's just the  
nature of open-source mailing lists for many participants to react  
knee-jerk negatively to any significantly new concept presented.  I've  
experienced the same and was at first seriously dismayed but came  
realize it's just the nature of the beast. I've learned the list is  
best used to discuss how to use existing implementations and not as a  
sounding board for new ideas.

If you've got a solution that introduces a new paradigm and you find  
it works well addressing tangible use cases you've experienced then  
more power to you. Go ahead and evolve it as you'd best see fit.  It  
may or may not take the world by storm if you create it but it  
certainly won't if negative criticism from the list causes you to  
abandon your efforts. I look forward to your success.

-Mike Schinkel


On Oct 3, 2009, at 12:36 PM, Venkatesh Rao wrote:

> Hi All:
>
> My colleague Jesse forwarded me the interesting responses from William
> Canino and Otto to our request for feedback on the WordTrails plugin,
> so I thought I'd join the list and the conversation.
>
> I am the product manager for the Xerox Trails product suite, and Jesse
> is the lead developer of the plugin, so I'll leave any technical
> questions, such as XHTML compliance, to him. I'll just make a couple
> of general points about where we are going with the product.
>
> First, in response to William's points, the original use case behind
> this idea of trail-based navigation wasn't actually tutorials/learning
> applications. It was my own frustration with some of the limitations
> of categories/tags and plugins like In Series (otherwise a great
> plugin!). I wanted a simple way to break out of both the default
> reverse-chronological ordering of blogs and the limited "table of
> contents" metaphor. In particular, I wanted the ability to create
> branches off the main narrative and the ability to intersect trails in
> order to reuse individual posts in multiple narratives. At the same
> time, I wanted a one-click ability to create instant, up-to-date PDF
> ebooks. My personal overall goal was to drive traffic to my older
> posts. I suspect this will be the main use case for most bloggers.
>
> So long as you don't go nuts, our user tests show that it turns out to
> be very intuitive for readers, since the metaphor is very close to
> driving on Interstate highways or hiking in National Parks.
> Trailblazing takes some thought and storytelling skill, but once you
> get used to it, it is very quick. It takes only a few minutes of
> browsing to create a rudimentary trail, and only a little bit longer
> if you want to include good metadata to override the defaults.
>
> You can see my own use of the plugin at my personal blog:
> http://www.ribbonfarm.com/trails where I've used it so far to organize
> my posts on the "future of work" into useful e-book like narratives.
>
> Other use cases include slide shows and learning tutorials like
> William noted, taxonomies, histories, trouble-shooting decision trees,
> photo-albums, online travel guides, treasure hunts etc. Some will fit
> the wiki model better (we'll be releasing a mediawiki plugin soon) and
> some will require cross-site trails (which we support at
> trailmeme.com).
>
> And to Otto's point about flowcharts perhaps not being the best model
> for navigation, we actually agree. The flowchart-like "bird's eye
> view" is only part of the user experience. Trails has both a sidebar
> "worm's eye view" aspect (where we expect users to spend 90% of their
> time) and a "bird's eye view" aspect, which we think of as a dynamic
> re-imagining of the sitemaps of the Web 1.0 era.
>
> Anyway, thanks for the great feedback, and looking forward to more.
> Please do email Jesse or me personally if you have specific questions
> (or the list if you think the question is of general interest).  The
> overall technology is currently in invite-only stealth mode, and this
> plugin is just the tip of the iceberg, so I hope some of you are
> intrigued enough to jump in as early adopters. We'll be sharing more
> details as we unveil more :)
>
> If you are interested in following the development more closely,
> please subscribe to http://blog.trailmeme.com
>
> Venkat
>
> Xerox Trails Product Manager
>
>
>
> [Otto]
>
>
> It does look interesting, but I'm not sure that a flowchart is perhaps
> the best way to do navigational systems. Neat idea though.
>
>
> [William Canino]
>
> Hi All,
>
> WordTrails is basically a tool to create multiple multidirectional
>
> reading paths within a blog.  The paths one creates are stored as XML,
> which are re-read by the plugin to make a navigational sidebar widget
> in HTML, or to display a flowchart in Flash.
>
> The idea of telling a visitor, "To learn foobaring, just follow the
>
> Foobar lesson, starting here, otherwise, move on to the next Barfoo
> chapter" and "You're reading part 8 of our Foobar tutorial, you can
> start at the beginning or look at the map," can potentially make this
>
> a killer WP app, but the explicit need for a tutorial AND the explicit
> need for instructions like "To read the next part, click the so-and-so
> on the WordTrails box in the navigation column to the top right of
> this post" make me wish I'd have made PowerPoint slides instead.
>
> It becomes further overwhelming when there are several navigation
> paths that overlap.
>
> Don't get me wrong, Jesse, Navigational User Interfaces is a tough nut
>
> to crack, but I think CBT tools do a better job at this than this.
> I'd love to try this if ever it becomes XHTML compliant.
>
> Best regards,
> W
>
>
> 2009/10/1 Silverstein, Jesse <Jesse.Silverstein at xerox.com>:
>
>> Hi WordPress community members:
>>
>>
>>
>> I am part of a team at the Xerox Innovation Group, and we've just
>> released a powerful plugin called "WordTrails" in beta.  I am  
>> emailing
>
>> this group to solicit volunteers to help us test it a bit before we
>> officially change the version number from 0.9.x to 1.0.
>>
>>
>>
>> WordTrails allows you to very easily blaze arbitrary paths (with
>
>> branches and loops) through a WP blog. Readers can follow these  
>> trails
>> through a "bird's eye view" Flash trailmap and a "worm's eye view"
>> sidebar widget. They can also linearize and convert a trail to a PDF
>
>> with one click.
>>
>>
>>
>> So WordTrails basically overlays a highly flexible navigation  
>> scheme on
>> a WP blog, and simultaneously turns it into a sort of one-click ebook
>
>> publishing system.
>>
>>
>>
>> I'd like to invite you to check out and install the plugin
>> (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordtrails). You can see it in
>
>> action at http://blog.trailmeme.com (click on the 'Trails' page). You
>> can also try it out for yourself before installing, on our sandbox  
>> blog
>
>> (open registration): http://blog.trailmeme.com/sandbox
>>
>>
>>
>> WordTrails is part of the ecosystem of a larger technology set called
>
>> Xerox Trails, which includes a destination site at www.trailmeme.com
>> <http://www.trailmeme.com/>  that is currently in invite-only beta.  
>> For
>
>> more background go to: http://blog.trailmeme.com/new-to-trails/
>>
>>
>>
>> Please let me know if you have any questions or feedback, or  
>> encounter
>
>> any bugs. Feel free to forward this email to any serious bloggers  
>> using
>> self-hosted WordPress. We've spent a year developing this plugin, and
>> are really eager to see what you guys do with it!
>
>>
>>
>>
>> Jesse Silverstein
>>
>> Jesse.Silverstein at xerox.com
>>
>
>>
>>
>> On behalf of the Xerox Trails team
>>
>> Xerox Research Center, Webster
>>
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>
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>
> ~~~~~
> experiments in refactored perception
> http://www.ribbonfarm.com
> twitter: http://twitter.com/vgr
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