Footnote.com

Footnote.com

Current rating: 4.6 (514 votes)

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• Added: 28 January 2007
• Designer: Footnote, Inc.
• Submitter: SG forum member

Review:

Footnote.com a robust, large, and dynamic site with too many features to list. The site tagline reads "Access millions of original documents — most never seen on the web before." The site also hopes to engage viewers and members to discuss the various documents offered.

The fluid design layout encompasses the full browser width, with it's background treatments, and is surprisingly scalable down to an 800 pixel width browser setting.

The homepage layout is very inviting, with it's large header, small slideshow, and call's to action —for your chance to explore history.

The color palette is a decidedly rustic one of warm orange hues with some more modern blues and greens tossed in. Page backgrounds are made up of white and other subtle neutral colors, which make for great overall readability.

Divided into two main categories; original documents and member pages, the layout of navigational elements makes for excellent ease of use. Nothing so much fancy as it is functional, from drop-down menus to text links, and search features. The extended search functionality brings up a variety of filters for sorting the results by title, from either the Original Document or Member pages. The search pages also load a large dynamic preview of the document into the first-rate search results!

I created a user account for myself, it was very easy, and not a hassle or time-consuming. There is an All-Access membership, which includes a subscription fee to access some documents, what ever those are, and upload more of your own document images.

A huge library of files is incorporated via a partnership with the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, also on the web at http://www.archives.gov. Footnote has a much more user-friendly appeal than this government run website. It will be interesting to see if Footnote can generate a true global set of assets and documents.

Reviewed by Tyler Gossman

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