Transcript HTML for Breakfast: Science on the Web

HTML for Breakfast:
Science on the Web
Patrick R. Michaud
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
[email protected]
Research History

1990 – A Methodology for the Objective
Evaluation of Hypermedia Environments
(Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Southwestern Louisiana)

1991 – Release of World Wide Web
(T. Berners-Lee, CERN)

1993 – Release of NCSA Mosaic
(Mark Andreesen, UIUC)

1994 – CBI/TAMU-CC sets up web site
Informal Research Questions
(1994)


How effective is HTML and the World
Wide Web for publishing scientific
research results?
How quickly will knowledge of a web
page spread throughout the Internet?
Research Challenges

Choice of publication topic:




Computer Science?
Environmental Studies?
HTML/WWW?
Topic should be relevant to wide
audience, yet have some scientific basis
for publication

[Barry 1993] identifies an important
hazardous consumer product that is
largely unregulated and freely available
to small children:
Kellogg's
Strawberry
Pop-Tarts
Strawberry Pop-Tart
Blow-Torches

In August 1994 I performed some
follow-up research to [Barry 1993] and
published the results on the web. The
resulting publication is available at
http://www.sci.tamucc.edu/~pmichaud/toast/
Observations

Although HTML was a fairly primitive
language in 1994, it was effective in
communicating results



In [Partridge 1995], the author solicited user
opinions of SPTBT and other contemporary web
sites.
Participants rated site as "best organized" and
"best use of graphics"
(Interestingly, participants rated site as least
useful.)
Observations

Even though the site was not
advertised, it was linked rapidly into the
web and public media
Number of hits to /~pmichaud/toast/
180000
160000
140000
120000
100000
80000
60000
40000
20000
0
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999