[Web4lib] Gracefully degrades to..?

[Jonathan Gorman]

> On Wed, 24 May 2006, Jonathan Gorman wrote:
>
>> I know someone had "evolution" approach to the css design but I can't 
>> remember where I saw it.  Of course, I can't remember if it was an actual 
>> webpage/software released to the world or something I or one of my friends 
>> was tinkering with ;).
>
> Might it be evolt.org?  Just curious.

No, that doesn't look like it.  Meant it quite literally when I said 
evolution approach.  The more I think about it might have been a toy 
system somewhere I came across while playing with a similar idea. It gives 
you some pages and layouts and you decide what pages are good ones.  It 
takes the "winners" from that generation, evolves them and presents you 
with new choices.

It would be an interesting system to make more complex.  One could have 
fitness rules for each generation that would have some sort of 
"prettiness" indicators.  (Ie if there are higher than a certain 
threashold of colors kill it before it is ever presented to the uesr).  I 
know Knuth had some stuff to agorithmically estimate "prettiness" for some 
Tex layout if I remember correctly.  Don't know any details about it 
though.

Hmmm, better stop thinking about this and get back to work.  But oh what a 
fun project that could be.

Probably not the best way to create a new site, but certainly could lead 
to some interesting alternatives.

Jonathan T. Gorman
Visiting Research Information Specialist
University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana
216 Main Library - MC522
1408 West Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801
Phone: (217) 244-4688


On Wed, 24 May 2006, John Creech wrote:

>
> John Creech, Systems Librarian
> Brooks Library, Central Washington University
>