Genre Prescripts
Finally, we should consider genre prescripts. Templates are generally made according to some well-established genre, and much of what they prescribe is actually genre conventions. In literature, film, and other media, genres are generally seen as flexible. In template systems, on the other hand, genre traits are inflexible, as they are given by the template.
A template is normally created with a special genre of communication in mind, which has incorporated typical traits of that genre. While the "spring writing" template shown in the section on design prescripts above is made to mimic a newspaper page, weblog templates are made to look similar to other weblogs, with several daily posts published on each page, together with an author bio, a descriptive subtitle (a "tag line"), favorite links, archive links, and other features such as comments, a calendar of posts, a "blog roll" (links to other blogs), and other features. A user trying to make a page or a film with the tools I tested outside of the prescribed genre will have to struggle.
Genres have always been patterns that guide both creators and readers. Like prescripts, genres are limiting and enabling at the same time. A Western has to be about the frontier in the American West, but given this limitation, the creator of a Western movie can assume that his audience will understand much of both the setting and the narrative structure from their previous knowledge of Westerns.
What is different with templates is that their genre prescripts are rigid. Traditionally, genres evolve through imitation. A writer imitates some traits of an earlier text, and when several imitate the same, we think of it as a genre. Edgar Allan Poe did not know he invented the detective genre when he wrote Murders in Rue Morgue, neither did Edwin S. Porter know that The Great Train Robbery would be the first Western film. Genres in literature and film are comparatively flexible, and it may be difficult, even impossible, to find a single text that incorporates all that is expected in a genre (see Rick Altman or Gérard Genette for a longer discussion on the flexibility of genres). In computer templates, much of the genre is set in stone. It is part of the mould, and will shape every material poured into it.
Transcending the Genres
The alternative templates I created as part of this project were all designed to show and to challenge the genre expectations. As all the home page templates I studied were made for creating single poster-like pages, and of little help for those who would like to create a whole site of related pages (with the exception of PowerPoint), my alternative focused more on structure and navigation of several pages than on looks. Leaving advanced layout and graphics alone, it merely lets the author write text and paste images into how many pages he or she wishes, and the template automatically gives them a simple uniform typography and creates navigation links between them.
My weblog template also incorporates more linking than what is common. It allows each post to be a separate page or a collection of pages, with their own layout, images, and sound. Links to earlier posts are simple to make, as well as indexing.
This post, "Hypertext Blogging," is the front page of a tiny sub-hypertext, a collection of interlinked pages.
"Say it Big" is an experiment with CSS typography.
"Snowy Morning" has accompanying music.
Although the blog template is not yet available for download, my own weblog (http://fagerjord.no/blog) is formatted in this way, and has received some attention and interest by other "bloggers."
These new templates offer new prescripts to make it simple to create some kinds of text, but necessarily make other aspects more difficult. Where my home page template sacrifices balanced professional-looking graphic design to allow for easy linking between pages in a site, my weblog template lacks support for several of the technical features common in modern blog systems: comments, calendar, "trackback" links, and so on.
Also in the home DVD my focus has been on links. I have challenged the linear format of analogue video, by incorporating a simple hypervideo format ("stretchvideo," based on Ted Nelson 's idea of "stretchtext") with links and alternative sequences. It answers the basic dilemma of any home video enthusiast: in order to create a film that anyone will stand to watch, you need to cut out a lot of your precious videotaped memories.
In my example films, a certain scene is introduced, and then the viewers get a choice: to see more of the scene, or continue to next scene. In a wedding movie, for instance, we see the car with the bride arrive, then the image halts, and the text "press PBC to see more of Mari arriving" appears.
If the viewer with the remote does nothing, the film cuts to the next scene, where the newlyweds leave the church. If the viewer does press, he or she sees an overlayed video "footnote" of the bride arriving before the next scene.
This template does in fact create a new video genre, not entirely like any widespread film format. It offers greater flexibility to the amateur editor, but the cost is that of immediate understanding. I expect the users of my template to internalize a film structure that they haven't seen before, and they have few or no example movies to look to for inspiration. We are used to thinking of filmic (and literary) genres as imitation and adaption of traits from earlier works. Although my movie template has clear dependence on earlier hypertext and interactive film works, few users can be expected to be familiar with these. If they use my template, they do choose to create works that can be part of a family of texts they know, but have to accept and trust the prescripts of a system.
Next chapter: Templates as a New Form >>