About our Website 0

Content 1

This website is the official website for the Doug Engelbart Institute, home base of Doug Engelbart's legacy past, present and future. We have grown our content considerably in recent years.

See our Site Map for the latest highlights.

For all our readers, we expanded our Library section. For change makers, practitioners and developers we have enhanced our Vision and Action/Initiatives sections, including an all-new Engelbart Academy, interactive Pivotal Strategy section, our ABC Toolkit for Bootstrapping Brilliance, Community Showcase, and Technology Showcase. For students and kids we upgraded our Kids page and Student Showcase. For faculty and education innovators we have the University Showcase. For authors and journalists our Press section with new Press Packet and Permissions page. And for history buffs, we've expanded the Doug Engelbart Archive more historical goodies, including archive video, photos, and demos, and an all-new Gallery of Pioneering Firsts, and Historic Events. And we added a new gallery of Awards received by Doug Engelbart with filter views, great Quotes, and a summary of his military service. And we now maintain a database of press archives browseable by decade, now featuring a Featured press section. More updates are on the way...

And we've been on social media since 2009. To follow our posts, see our Connect or Join Us! pages.

Special Features 2

Toolbar 2a

New! Most recently we upgraded our Toolbar on the site banner for more enhanced browsing. Use the menu icon button to show or hide our site menu and floating table of contents (see below). And the +/– Banner button to hide or show the site banner. On selected pages (for example on this page) you will now also see our all-new VIEW buttons to show or hide Purple Numbers or Labels, as well as an Outline view (example). Details below.

Efficient Access 2b

Our site offers a number of features that enhance browsing efficiency whether in your office, on a laptop, mobile device, or simply working fast and furious across multiple windows. Using a small browser window, you can minimize the page banner with the +/- Header button, and hide the site menu and table of contents using the menu button, to make more room for content. The main menu is designed to help you find what you are looking for in one or two clicks. Once you get to a file, the Table of Contents or Outline view gives you the bird's eye view, allowing you to click directly to the section(s) of most interest. And when you find something you want to bookmark, cite, or share with others, you can right-click on the item's purple number or label to bookmark or copy a link to that exact item in the file.

Outline View 2c

The VIEW Outline button offers an outline view, or bird's eye view, of the content, by showing just the headings. Like a table of contents, you can click on a heading to jump to that section with an open view. In fact we generalized this feature so even when you are normally viewing the file (i.e. not an Outline view), clicking on a heading will jump it directly. (Would be nice when you jump to a section to have the option to jump up to its parent with an outline view, or to the top of the file! Perhaps in a future release.)

Purple Numbers 2d

The purple numbering in the right margin provides both a visual point of reference, and a quick, easy way for you to jump around, and/or link directly to any numbered item on any page on our site. Each number is a hotlinked 'anchor name,' so you can click on it to jump directly to it. If you right-click on the purple number, you can Copy Link pointing directly to it. Note that when you jump to an item this way, or using the Table of Contents, or Outline view, the location number is added to the URL at the top of your browser window, which you can also copy to paste elsewhere; note if you then bookmark the page, this is the URL saved in the bookmark. As for providing visual awareness, the numbering gives a sense of relative location in the content, as well as the structure, of the document. For more background, history, and broader application of purple numbers, see Doug Engelbart's Authorship Provisions in Augment (esp. sections #6 and #8), Eugene Kim's An Introduction to Purple, and Peter Yim's PurpleNumbers page and open source extension which added automatic purple numbers to MediaWiki pages Extension: Purple MediaWiki.

Purple Labels 2e

Across the entire web, authors and content providers have inserted hidden address labels or 'anchor names' in strategic places that can be used to jump directly to those parts of the file. However, you can't see them, unless you know how to search the source html code inside the file. With our Labels button (see this page's Toolbar VIEW buttons above), you can view or hide all the hidden labels in the file, and as with purple numbers, click on them to jump directly to, or right-click to Copy Link to. Our labels are shown as purple text on a gray background, distinct from the content, hence "purple labels."

Table of Contents 2f

Thanks to our full-service service providers at MRW Connected we offer an open source floating Table of Contents feature (shown at left, if showing), allowing you to quickly zero in on the information you seek. What it does is capture the headings on the webpage to a pre-set level of detail automatically, hotlinked to their pre-assigned purple numbers. It also provides visual context. (Would be nice to highlight which section currently viewing! Perhaps a future release.)

A Note on Precision Navigating 2g

Our Purple Numbers and Table of Contents features allow you to navigate our webpages with precision and accuracy. These and many other very crucial, not to mention useful features grew out of what Doug Engelbart has been calling for in a ubiquitous open hyperdocument system (OHS) of selected architectural and functional features missing in today's information technology that are needed to support dynamic knowledge repositories (DKRs) -- the more tangible elements of boosting Collective IQ (Vision). For example, in an OHS-compatible browsing and editing environment, you would be able to change your view on the fly, expanding or collapsing your table of contents view, hiding or showing the numbering, in the right margin or the left, show or hide author-supplied anchor tags or automatically-supplied time stamps noting the date, time and author who last modified an item. Note we are collaborating on a basic HyperScope prototype to demonstrate such features. For more information, see About an Open Hyperdocument System (OHS).

Interactive Video 2h

Precision navigating also applies to video material. We're committed to offering fine-grained video browsing, so you can sample selected segments or chapters of a video rather than always having to watch from start to finish. Our all-new Engelbart Academy uses our custom Interactive Video Gallery software. To experience the 'Mother of All Demos' interactively, we offer a video digest format thanks to our collaboration with Bret Victor. And throughout our site, as indicated by the icon, we've used fancybox software to play your selections projector style. On our YouTube channel, we've added chapter timecodes to many of the videos.

Hide/Show Banner 2i

To accommodate user preference on the fly, we added the Hide/Show Header feature on the page banner. On the one hand, we wanted to show the man who spawned this legacy, quoting the essence of his driving vision. On the other hand, we wanted to honor his vision for flexible view control, so if you are working in a tight space you can hide the niceties to allow room for more content. We also wanted to honor the environment, which for printing translates to hiding the header reduces the amount of ink needed and allows more content to fit on the first page.

Evolving Since 1996 3

See Early Archives of our Website for a look at how our site has grown and changed over the years.

Appreciation 4

dougengelbart.org 4a

The current website organization, content, and look and feel came about in late 2008. Deep gratitude to our web partners at MRW Connected for all their efforts in designing, implementing, and hosting. Many thanks also to Shinya Yamada for ongoing volunteer efforts.

bootstrap.org (precursor) 4b

Christina Engelbart created our first website under Bootstrap Institute in the mid-1990s, with some help from ISX Corporation. Later Henry van Eyken greatly extended the content into the late 2000s, with considerable volunteer support, most notably the many years of service from Shinya Yamada and especially Bill Daul.