Change this

Writing about web page http://www.changethis.com/

The web site Change this is quite interesting. It's apparently not-for-profit, has no adverts or sponsorship, was created and is run by a small group of US interns, and publishes a range of articles (they call them manifestos) contributed by various authors, some well known, others not. Some of the focus is on business, but other articles cover science and personal issues. They also have an interesting model for future articles; they invite ideas from prospective authors, then publish them on the site and ask their readers to vote for the ones they think look interesting. And their copyright position is imaginative too; anyone can host any of their manifestos on their own site, or redistribute it to others in any way they wish, as long as they don't alter the content.

Some quotes from some manifestos that caught my attention:-

You need to make it both possible and profitable for employees to help customers. That generally means reviewing your operations to find the bottlenecks and disconnects that seemingly transform well-meaning employees into naysayers that refuse to help customers. (http://www.changethis.com/3.Less )

Fact No. 1: We all have 50 genuine priorities. Fact No. 2: If we get even two Big Things Done in a six-year tenure on the current job, we will have had a… Great Ride. Axiom No. 1: Therefore, what we choose not to do is at least as important, or more important, as what we choose to do. But effective "To-Don't" lists are far, far, more difficult than effective "To-Do" lists. (http://www.changethis.com/2.ThisIBelieve )

The other thing that I think is interesting about the site is that the manifestos are published as PDFs. I'm not generally a big fan of PDFs unless the document is intended specifically to be printed, so when I first looked at the site, this seemed like a big downside. But to my surprise, the PDFs they've created have gone some way towards making me think again about what PDFs can be good for, because they've done some smart things:-

• They've chosen an aspect ratio for their PDFs that's well-suited to the screen, rather than well-suited for printing. So their PDFs are roughly 4:3-ish, and as a result, when you open one, it fits well into your browser window rather than leaving acres of empty space to its left and right.
• They've set a sensible viewing default, "Fit to available space". So if your browser window is a reasonable size, the PDF fills it and the text is immediately a comfortable size.
• They've hidden all the PDF toolbar cruft away so the document feels more like a regular web page.
• They've put simple controls actually into the footer of the document, and also on the keyboard. So left & right arrow keys step through the document one page at a time, no scrolling needed.
• They've designed the layout and typography to work well on-screen. The documents look good, use colour, space, fonts and imagery elegantly, and of course, as PDFs, they are pretty much device-independent.

I don't know much about how PDF files in this style are created, but it almost makes me wonder if files like these couldn't be used as simple learning objects.

John Dale : 11 Sep 2004 20:21 |  Tags: Links |  Comments (3) |  Report a problem