The goal of this guide is to help you choose a path through our posts. This page provides an overview of how the site works; the other pages suggest ways to choose which post to start with and which ones to read after that, and explain features of the posts themselves.
This site is designed to be navigated with the graphs that you can make appear to the left. The graphs offer a different "views" of the set of posts, by representing different sorts of relationships among them.
- Use the "Select a View" dropdown menu (right end of the the bar below the graph; click horizontal line button if not visible) to activate the corresponding graph.
- If the graph does not render properly click the name in the "Select a View" menu again. (If it still doesn't work use your browser's reload button. We have noticed problems in Safari (other than version 8)--it seems to work best in Firefox and Chrome.)
- The "Redraw Graph" option below the graph produces a new arrangement of the nodes (if not visible click horizontal line button at right end of bar below graph).
- You can manually rearrange the nodes by dragging them with the mouse.
- An explanation of the view will appear in this space. This will be replaced by the posts (and other content), but you can bring it back by clicking on the name of the view at the left end of the bar below the graph, or use the Contents tab in the top menu (click horizontal line button at right of menu bar if not visible).
- A Key to the view will appear below the graph to the left, and will remain until you choose another view. It interprets the elements in the graph--the nodes and the edges that connect them.
- Comments on the view will appear below the graph to the right.
- When you enter a view the Comments will explain what information will appear when you hover and click in the graph
- In general, hovering on a node shows a preview, for post nodes, or a short description, for approach and theme nodes.
- In general, hovering over an edge shows an explanation of the relationship between the linked nodes.
- Once in a view you can click the "Contents" tab in the top menu (click horizontal line button at right of menu bar if not visible) to get to a listing of the posts represented in the graph, and to explanations of other views.
- In all views (except Home), the circles represent posts--color-coded to the author and labeled with his or her initials.
- Hover the mouse over a post node to see its title, and a preview of the post in the Comments. Hovered nodes have a yellow border.
- Click on a post node to select it.
- Post appears at the right of the screen.
- Author's bio appears in the Comments. Moving mouse in graph might make it disappear; click author's name in the post to restore.
- The selected node will have a green border when the mouse moves away.
- In Approaches and Themes views there are additional nodes--colored squares for Approaches, gray polygons for Themes.
- The Approach colors determine the colors for the authors--see the Explanation of Approaches under Contents int he top menu.
- Hover and click on these nodes to see explanations--in the Comments, and in this space.
- In most views, clicking a node will zoom the graph to a closer look at that node and the others it links to.
- Click in the white space around the graph to zoom back out. The selected node remains highlighted by a green border.
- Click on the name of the view at the left of the bar below the graph to see the explanation of the view in this space.
- Edges (lines between nodes) indicate a relationship between them--depending on the current view.
- Hover/click to see a brief explanation on the graph, and, in some views, more detail in the Comments section.
- In Author-Supplied Pairings View broken/faint line style indicates whether an author identified the linked posts as similar or different.