About_Navigation
Main Hub
This website is better understood as a book, but with the added advantage of hyper-linking. The content is organized in a tree-like fashion, with three basic layers of navigation: the main hub, from chapter hubs, and lastly from article to article. At the top layer we have the "main hub" which acts as the root of the tree and the starting point for navigating the site and web book.
Here is the basic layout of the main hub. It contains 5 major areas of content: the Header panel, Information panel, Updates & Annoucements Panel, the Chapter Links Panel, and the Communications Panel.
The Header is simply the portion of the website that will greet you whenever you enter the site.
Just below this is the Information Panel, which provides a clear statement of the websites purpose and organization to potential new readers. Perhaps it most important feature is the link to the Information desk which serves as an orientation on the site and the larger community of which it is a part.
On the far right running down Along the entire page is the Updates&Announcements Panel which keeps a running log of all the updates and changes to the site and provides quick links to new or revised content. It is the quickest way to keep up to date with changes to the site, but not the only or most detailed way (see Communication Center). Even though the Updates & Announcements Panel runs for the entirety of the main hub this is simply not enough space to contain all of the websites history! To see even earlier history all the way to the very inception of the site you can click the "older updates" link at the bottom.
Lastly we have the Communication Panel which provides a link to the Communication Center, a place for more detailed announcements as well as my contact information for further inquiries.
Of these 4 major content areas NONE of these are considered part of the web book. All of these merely pertain to the website. The web book is accessed through the Chapter Panel. The book is organized in much the same way as typical textbooks on mathematics. The content is broken up into numbered "Sections". These sections are further sub-divided into numbered "Chapters". Each chapter itself is composed of a series of articles. Sections are referred to using roman numerals, chapters are referred to using the section number followed by the chapter number separated by a point (ie. 2.3 ), and articles are given 3 number indexes listing their section,chapter, and article number in that order, again separated by points (ie. 3.2.5). The book also contains an appendix that provides useful reference material not easily integrated into the main content.
The Chapter Panel serves essentially as a high level table of contents. In the Chapter Panel the Sections are listed in order and a brief paragraph describing its content is included for convenience. This is followed by a list of available chapters within the section, including chapter names but without individual descriptions. The Chapter Panel contains links to all currently available chapters of One to Infinity as well as a link to the appendix. Clicking a chapter link will bring you to the corresponding chapter hub (described next). Navigation by means of the Main Hub allows instant access to any of the chapters and gives one a birds eye view of the book as a whole. All pages provide a link back to the Main Hub at the top left corner, so that the Main Hub acts as a convenient nexus for all your navigation needs. However it is not the only method of navigation. Two other nifty modes of navigation are possible.
Chapter Hub
On the left hand side we have the Chapter Select Panel. Here links to all available chapters ,the appendix, and the index are available ( a link to the Communication Center doesn't exist because this is not an official part of the book). All Chapter Hubs have a Chapter Select, and even the Appendix and Index has one. In this way one can navigate the entire web book without ever leaving the Chapter Hubs. This constitutes the 2nd layer of navigation possible. Note however that the Chapter Select only supplies the bare minimum amount of information for each chapter, typically just the chapter index and an abbreviated version of the chapter title. Furthermore the chapter select will only bring you to book content. To go to non-book content on the website you have to first return to the main hub.
Lastly we have the Articles Panel. At the top is usually a paragraph introducing the user to the material for the chapter. Below this is a list of links to all the available articles. Every article is assigned a 3 digit index in the form x.y.z, where x is the section number, y is the chapter number, and z is the article number.
To leave the Chapter Hub and return to the Main Hub simply click on the "home" link at the upper left corner of the page.
The Appendix
The Appendix also has a hub page similar to a chapter hub. It includes a header, Chapter Select, and Link Panel. Although the Appendix is not a chapter in the usual sense it is none the less given the designation A.1, suggesting that it is the first chapter of "Section A". It is possible that in further expansions of the Appendix Section there may be a need for further appendices, to presumably be labled A.2,A.3 etc.
The Link Panel contains the links to all of the sub-appendices of A.1. Unlike articles however these appendices are designed with capital letters, Appendix A, Appendix B, etc.
The Index
The Index is a new feature of the web book that allows for quick hyper-linking to the books content sorted by topic. Since the Index is part of the book it can always be accessed via the Chapter Select. The Index has a Header and Chapter Select panel just like a chapter hub. The main content area however is a list of topics relevant to googology sorted alphabetically. Next to each entry is a list of links sending you to any available articles that discuss the topic, however tangentially. This feature is still new so don't expect to find every topic indexed, or every instance of a topic indexed. Furthermore, there are many areas of googology that One to Infinity still does not over. Since they can't be found in the book there is also no indexes to them. As content is added to the book however, the index will grow along side it.
The Communication Center
The Communication Center is similar to a chapter Hub but has a few distinctive traits. It has a header and a Link panel, but it does not has a Chapter select on the left as it's not part of the book content but acts instead as an announcement center. It does however have an Update Panel on the right side just like the main Hub. The main feature of the communication center is a list of dated posts that I wrote to inform users of developments and plans for the web site.
Articles
You will enter a Chapter Hub anytime you click a chapter link on the Main Hub. The Chapter Hub makes all the content of a single chapter available in one place. It has 3 major content areas: The Header, The Chapter Select, and the Article Panel.
The Header will include a chapter image. Chapters in the same section often have the same chapter image, though not always. Below the chapter image will be the Chapter index followed by the name of the chapter. Each Section has a different color scheme and the chapters follow the sections color scheme. Below the chapter index and name is typically a quote relevant to the chapter material.
Articles are where the real content of the web book is found, The Main Hub and Chapter Hubs merely serving as means to easily access and navigate this vast array of content. Article exist only 2 layers below the root, which means that you never have to click more than twice to reach any article from the Main Hub. Each article as a Return Bar listed at the top of it's page. This allows the user to at any time either return to the Main Hub, or the Chapter Hub the article is contained in. Below this is listed its index number and a short version of the title. This is also the title that will appear on the top of your tab for that webpage. Below that is the header along with a header image, the article index, and the full version of the Title. The rest of the page down to the bottom will be the articles content. For some article that require a lot of research you may find at the bottom a list of numbered links as sources. If this is the case the article will also include references to these links by enclosing the number in square brackets, ie. [1] refers to link 1, [2] to link 2, etc.
Each article will also include a link to the previous article at the top of the article just after the header, and a link to the next article just after the end of article content but before reference links. Currently the only exception for this is when an article begins a chapter it won't have a previous article link, and when it is the last article of a chapter it won't have a next article link. The previous (PREV) and next (NEXT) functionality serves as the third layer of navigation possible on the site. This navigation however is limited within the context of a chapter however (In the further I may implement a new article navigation feature where by one can begin at the beginning of the book and proceed through all the articles in sequence if one wishes).
There is also a fourth layer of navigation but it is only used occasionally. Sometimes there is much more technical content that would clutter the main article and only be of interest to some of my readers. In this case there will sometimes be a sub-article. Sub-articles are accessed through hyper-links found in the flow of the article content. They are presented as optional reading (If One to Infinity were a paper back all this content would probably be placed after the books usual content in an appendix for interested readers). Most articles contain no sub-articles, a few contain a single sub-article, and rarely it may contain several sub-articles. If you should click one of these links you'll be sent to the associated sub-article.
Sub-articles aren't much different than articles, but there are some key differences. Sub-articles aren't typically given index numbers. Their header may not contain a header image but will probably include a sub-article title, though that may not even be guaranteed. The main difference with sub-articles is that they will only link you back to their parent article but not to any other articles or sub-articles. In theory sub-articles should include a Return Bar, but because many of these sub-articles were written before I implemented the return bar across the board as a means of return navigation. As such some sub-articles may only contain a link back to the original article at the top of the page but not at the bottom. There may also be a link back "home" to the Main Hub, but not to the Chapter Hub. But even under the worse case scenario that a sub-article contains no links you can always return back to it's parent article just by pressing back in your web browser. I do however try to always provide the user with built-in means of navigation.
Page Not Found
Sometimes while clicking on links you may be sent to a "Page not found" page. Most likely its not that the page you were suppose to be sent to doesn't exist, but rather that the pages url has been changed from the link url and so google sites is not able to find it. The "Page not found" is a built-in feature of google sites to compensate for broken links by making a list of suggestions of what might be the correct page. Most of these will be dead wrong. These problems are usually encountered in the early chapters of the web book because these were written at a time when google sites didn't automatically update all links when a page url is changed. This meant that you had to manually correct all links and it was easy to make mistakes. Nowadays this is much less of a problem since links to internal pages are automatically updated everytime a url is changed. Just be patient for the time being while I iron out the remainder of these problems, it's a pretty big site to maintain.
Happy Hunting!
Well that's pretty much what you need to know to get around and get the most out of the website. Feel free to start reading the book from beginning to end or freely jumping around if you like. While the content is written to be sequential, it is also written in a modular enough way that you can start out at a chapter or article that interests you and not be too lost. If the article uses concepts used earlier there will sometimes be a back-reference link to an earlier part of the book, making it easy to just hop around out of sequence and learn as you go if that's more your speed. Regardless of how you choose to navigate the site I hope you enjoy your journey. Happy Hunting!
Sincerely, Sbiis.ExE