Tools

When you click on the link of the hypertext to read it, a black background appears on the screen, then a voice saying some phrases in Arabic is heard and on the screen appear the subtitles in English of what that voice says. Maybe the voice heard is the same Sharif Ezzat, the author of this hypertext. Meanwhile, the black background is filled with twinkling stars that are getting bigger and smaller. The stars are sized and placed randomly on each visit, so you can choose the stars in different ways each time you read it. Is like looking at a sky night full of stars.

The sky is a collection of stories that the narrator tells to the reader. There are nine blue stars which, when clicked contain stories. In that sky there are many gray stars and nine blue stars that are those that contain the interactive part of the text because when you move mouse over them, there are a series of questions that are those which the narrator introduces in Arabic at the beginning of hypertext. Each of these blue stars contains the story of the item introduced in the question.

To read the story you only have to click on the blue stars and suddenly the text appears in the middle of the screen. Sometimes the story is a little longer and the text occupies more than what the screen shows, so to continue reading the story, what you have to do is drag the mouse down and the rest of the text will appear. When you finish reading it you can close that text clicking on the cross that is down the text or simply click on another blue sky and the text of that story will appear. During you are reading the stories, there are some bells chiming in the background.

As Sharif Ezzat said in a post he wrote in a blog “Like Stars in a Clear Night Sky uses xml-formatted data, decoupling the content and the interface which, among other things, allows the number of stories to grow and the content to be modified infinitely”. So he has considered another life for this piece, in which users can share their own experiences on a story’s theme, they could be represented in the interface as constellations around each “main” story’s star. He said this in an interview that the bloggers made him in the same blog where he published his post.

The result of the work is a text that gives a sense of peace, tranquility and familiarity. It makes you imagine that you’re in a place away from civilization where the stars shine with strength, listening to stories. The only detail that, in my opinion, doesn´t combine with this feeling of tranquility is the sound of the bells that remind me more like a convent. In my opinion, I would have put other more relaxing background sound or any type of Arab music to follow the style of the voice at the beginning.



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