A particularly playful aspect of the web essay, as I grew to view it (or as it grew on me) was the title that I chose to give each page. Whenever possible (meaning whenever it didn't feel forced) I tried to give my titles a portmanteau feel. I wanted them to act as portals (no, not that kind) to various associations that added additional dimensions to the ever expanding web of the Boidem.
Just what is a title? In a printed document it's the line of print that appears above the bulk of the text, almost always in a larger print size. In HTML terms, that's referred to as the "Head". The title is the text that appears on the very top of the browser. These can both be the same, and often they are. Often, people who don't know the basics of HTML copy the format of a page and simply paste in their content, and don't even notice that the title has remained the same as the original page. Sometimes automatic page generators place a generic name in the title. Most of the time, however, the two are the same - the content of the <HEAD> section gets copied to the <TITLE> section.
But isn't that a terrible waste of possibilities? If they can be different, perhaps they should be different. In this spirit, I have often built my titles as conglomerates of the two: Title and Head holding hands to make a whole. Of course I knew full well that few readers actually know to lift their eyes to the title, and that those who don't know to do this undoubtedly feel a bit confused by titles (at least in the conventional sense) that seem only to hint at something, or be only partially there. But I saw this as one more means of making use of the possibilities of the medium, and of expanding the levels on which readers can relate to these essays.
Go to: It's more than just words and
links, you know, or
Go to: Trying to make some
sense out of all this, or
Go to: An introduction to the extroduction,
or
Go to: Web Essays - The evolution of a (personal?)
medium