On May 31st, 2000, Holland's Rijksmuseum celebrated its 200th birthday, so a visit to the museum's impressive Website is in order. With over 6,000 pages of text, 4,000 illustrations and animations, heavy use of Java programing and QuickTime movies, approaching the site can be daunting. Textual icons swim into place on the homepage: General Information, Collection, Education, etc. Mousing over the text reveals the contents of each section, such as tickets, hours, and access under General Information. Beneath the text is a detail of a painting of a man's face. Color bars that link to important events at the museum appear in this area when users run their cursors over it: an ongoing exhibition, The Glory of the Golden Age; virtual tour; and 200th birthday events. A row of thumbnails of highlights of the collection is at the top of pages in the Collection section. The museum's most famous painting, Rembrandt's "Night Watch" is in the upper left corner of the row. Clicking on any thumbnail gets a slightly larger view, and a mysterious icon, a double-arrow ruler bar with numbered boxes, appears to the right. This turns out to link to pages of related information; the numbers indicate how many, discussing the lighting, composition, and history of the painting. Using the Web to display contextual information about museum objects in this way is much beloved by museum professionals. However, I personally would prefer a full window view of the art, and fewer browser crashes caused by the intricate programming required.
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