Jim Regan - Site Reviews
Endurance
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Sir Ernest Shackleton
The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914 should have been the first crossing of the continent on foot. Instead, it became one of history's greatest struggles for survival -- a 22-month odyssey from which, amazingly, the entire crew returned alive. Yet, despite a story of staggering hardships and a miraculous outcome, the only reason most of us have any knowledge of Shackleton's expedition (and his ship, the Endurance) is the legacy of expedition photographer, Frank Hurley -- images that still inspire wonder 85 years after the fact. It is Hurley's story that is told at The Endurance.
Hosted by Kodak and designed by Second Story, The Endurance reveals a photographer more than equal to the immense challenges of the operation. Hurley worked in a darkroom with a temperature just above freezing, ("Washing [glass-plate negatives] is troublesome as the tank must be kept warm or the plates become an enclosure in an ice block....) and when the Endurance was sinking, he stripped to the waist and dove under four feet of ice and water to rescue his work. (When conditions forced Hurley to leave some negatives behind, he made his decisions, then smashed the rejected negatives to prevent second guessing.) As a photographer, Hurley abandoned the standard practice of simply recording daily activities in favor of dramatic narrative photography, made early use of color and multiple flash photography, and rounded things out by taking motion pictures as well.
The layout of the site is a four Frame arrangement -- ID and 'global' navigation at the top and bottom, with the middle of the browser window occupied by an ingenious interactive map to the left (Flash required), and text to the right. There are, of course, an abundance of expedition photographs enhancing the text, in both black and white and color (though there are no files of the shot during the trip), while the map serves to place events in both a geographical and chronological context . Through the magic of Flash, the visitor can adjust the map's magnification, and click and drag to reorient the image.
And yet, there appear to have been some unfortunate assumptions made in the design of the site -- the first being that everyone always surfs with JavaScript enabled. Arrive without it, and you'll become very familiar with, "Sorry, the page you were trying to access...does not exist...". Get to the map through the "Expedition" link in the bottom Frame, and the map you'll encounter will be immobile and enlarged beyond usefulness. (A 'low-end' intro page notes the need for the Flash plug-in, but not JavaScript, and all these difficulties could lead a visitor to simply conclude that the site is defective and abandon the visit.) Even with JavaScript enabled, there is nothing to indicate the click-and-drag capabilities of the map -- a feature I discovered entirely by accident.
There is also that most common of assumptions -- that we all have large screens/browser windows. Pages that need scrollbars on a 640x480 screen don't have them, and although the four Frame arrangement is fine for the opening animation, the top and bottom Frames take up entirely too much real estate once serious exploration begins -- reducing the content Frames to virtual keyholes, and seriously taxing the visitor's multi-directional scrolling powers.
Fortunately, it is possible to 'trick' the site into being a bit more accommodating in this regard. After the site fully loads, click and hold on the "Expedition" link until your browser reveals the 'copy this link' option. Copy the link, paste it into the browser's Location/URL window, and hit return. Instead of four Frames, you'll now have a window holding only the map and text Frames. (The text Frame is still a bit cramped, and you may want to take the additional step of opening the that Frame into its own window as well, but either way, for small browsers, it's a large improvement.)
All in all, that's more trouble than some sites are worth -- and much or all of it could have been avoided with a 'how to use this site' note and a Frame-reduced viewing option. But in the best traditions of love/hate relationships, it doesn't prevent me from recommending a visit. The story is fascinating, the images compelling, and a bit of 'site manipulation' is a small price to pay for the experience. (Compare that burden to those of a crew that spent 22 months in one of the planet's harshest environments without even setting foot on the continent they had hoped to traverse -- and it won't seem so bad.)
The Endurance can be found at http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/features/endurance/home/index.shtml until the end of October, when the site will be moved to Kodak.com's features archive at http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/features/archives/featureArchives.shtml.
(The American Museum of Natural History recently concluded an exhibition on the Shackleton expedition. Those interested in more details about the Endurance and her crew can find the exhibition's companion site at http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/shackleton/)
Jim Regan provides 'Today's Links' to the e-Monitor. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.