Not only do I love a new Mac Dashboard widget I've installed from the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam, I especially love their site interface. It's always tricky to show great art online, without losing either an overall view or the fine details of a piece. But I think they've done the trick with a really fluid, intuitive interface. Here's a sample page, for The Battle of Livorno, a pen painting by William van de Velde the Elder.
Note the medium-size view that slides in from the left when you click on the always-visible sliver, and also the animated thumbnails of related pieces toward the upper left and the link to a high-resolution version.
And is there no site-wide navigation? But yes, there is! It's always there, tucked away in the yellow stripe.
This clean interface keeps lots of information close at hand, without cluttering the page.
Posted by Jon on December 9, 2005 11:50 AM