For a visitor to your Web site, there's few things more disconcerting than being lost in Cyberspace.

You know the feeling. You enter a new site, preferably from the top, and start surfing around. You click a link here, touch another there and then, all of a sudden you're saying "holy guacamole! I have no freakin' idea where I am!" Yup, like the proverbial rat in a maze your stuck dead in the middle of a site with no idea where you are, how you got there, and no visible way out. "A maze of twisty little passages..." (if you remember where that phrase came from, you're probably too dang old to be reading this claptrap anyway!)

But we digress. It's scary being lost in a site when you come in the front door-- it's even worse if you happen to pop in from a search engine or through a link. All of a sudden you're plopped into the middle of a site and unless the Web designer has really done his or her job, you're pretty clueless about where to go next. It sucks.

The fact is that it's pretty tough to be able to give your readers a complete idea where they are unless you really, really take pains in your site design to give them the visual cues they need. Menus are fine but they've gotta be maintained. A site index can help but you usually get no good clue about where you are and what connects to what. There's gotta be a better way.

And there is! Today's Cool Tool, Joust, is a new breed of Web site design tool that goes beyond graphics to adding real structural functionality to your site. Existing as a freely-available set of JavaScript source code, Joust lets you create really, really spiffy JavaScript index menus that function just like Windows Explorer (or Mac Finder) folder hierarchies. Wanna see a major topic? Look at the folders! Wanna see what's down farther? Just click on a folder and watch it expand. No more lost in Cyberspace for you, bucko!

Yes--you heard right earlier-- this thing's free! It comes complete with all the files you need, the graphics to make 'em work correctly, and directions for implementing the stuff. Neat!

So quit letting your visitors get lost. Get Joust and put some signposts up in your Web.

Joust is the first Outline Navigation System for the Web which:

1. Downloads in seconds even on a 14.4k dial-up connection!
2. Doesn't rely extensively on large GIF images
3. Executes locally to avoid repetitive remote server access
4. Runs on any JavaScript capable Browser (Netscape 2 and 3, IE 3, CompuServe etc.)
5. Personalises look-and-feel depending on the Browser and the Client platform (Windows Explorer, MacOS, OS/2, etc.)
6. Uses Dynamic HTML for improved performance without sacrificing support for older browsers.
7. Supports a "Floating Menu" as well as a frames interface.
8. Supports Dynamic Menus to make large menus faster and more flexible.

This is version 2.0.2 (dated September 29, 1997) of the Joust Outliner. You can check for newer versions by visiting the Alchemy Computing web site and looking in the About this site section.