Lexia to Perplexia was just as the title suggested, very perplexing. The presentation style is very abstract and piecing together the various bits of text was a challenge. However, from reading through the pages, it seems as if the text is talking about humans, perhaps comparing and constrasting humans to computers. A lot of the language used and writing style used is similar to a programming language or to abbreviations used on computers. This creates an obvious link between what the text was discussion and computers, and was probably the most concrete link/idea presented within the various lexia. Because there isn’t any concrete navigation, other than the main menu and about page, clicking through the various lexia can become tedious. You are never quite sure where to click in order to move on or gain new text. it was a very interesting piece of hypertext though.
The Bomar Gene presents readers with a unique and interesting idea. This idea is that every single person has a gene unique to them which gives them an ability that no one else has. Some of these abilities are useless and go unnoticed while others are incredibly useful and powerful. The author used Macromedia Flash very effectively to present the stories of various individuals and their gene’s/abilities. The navigation is presented as a DNA strip at the top of the page, and the direction that your mouse is moving/its location on the page dictates which way the DNA strip scrolls. There are small links on the DNA strip that bring up different stories. Each story has a piece of text to read and some sort of graphical display on the right side. For me at least, the graphic acted to spark my imagination and bring the story to life. I really liked this piece of hypertext, it does a great job of holding the readers attention.
Obviously Lexia to Perplexia and The Bomar Gene employed multimedia in different ways to get their points across, both of which did so in a successful way. Lexia to Perplexia seemed to use multimedia more to create chaos and confusion for the reader. The multimedia used isn’t really consistant or similar between pages, other than that it uses symbols and computer language along with chaos to get its point acros. This seems to bring the message to the reader of complexity and chaos, which seems to be what the author was going for. The Bomar Gene, on the other hand, uses multimedia in a different way. It is relatively straight forward once you figure out the navigation method, and readers can quickly get to different pages and easily and coherently read each page. The Bomar Gene’s message seems to be more scientific, more straight forward and clear cut, and the multimedia use in The Bomar Gene is also straight forward and clear cut. So, I think that each page really uses multimedia very well to get their individual messages across, and each page is a success in its own way.