In the quest to make RUFFLES & RIBBONS GIRLS' HOME live up to its boast as "The bestest Little girls playhouse and rubber nursery anywhoere" we chose to attempt to make it as much like real life as possible. To that end, here are two formats used here.

Virtual Reality: The presentation of things in a created "setting" that is divided and set up as a place rather than a publication. This is inherent in the term 'website. and implies a location and a physical arragnement or layout. As such, we divide this site into buildings and rooms and other places that are given the kinds of names they would have in real life. Also the layout is such that it resembles how a real place of its kind would be set up. This means that the center of activity is the last place which is the opposite of what you would expect in a publication made of pages instead of a place made of little places. Also, when you go into the Gatehouse or School, you first go through an entryway where you leave your coat and hat and dress in the RUFFLES & RIBBONS GIRLS' HOME manner. This is an extra step but it serves a purpose While this is counter-intuitive for a website, it works very well for an imaginary place. So, like a real place and like a real person, you must learn your way around as if it were a real place. Also I put activities in the appropriate place. You read at the library, you do arts and crafts in a playroom in the main living buildings, you shop at an appropriately designed and named shopping plaza. Another concept I use is 'weaving". This is how we place the links to things. Rather tna use a common link page, you find our over 200 (and growing) links in the areas to what they are about. The links to places to buy things is in the SHOPPING PLAZA which is broken down by topic. the periodicals to which we subscribe links are in the "Magazine Rack" which is located in the "Main office" of each section, and so forth, The closest we have to a link page is LOOKING GLASS, also in the "office" and l inks to places of interest

This also touches on "look and feel". When you go into a big room or hall, you will see the gloss of soft chandeliered lighting on hardwood floors that are sooo realistic. Go ahead count the planks

Graphic User Interface: This is a format that presents much if its activities in pictures. Most of the picutres, unless they are in the Picture books or imagaes to save, are links. That is, they lead to somewhere. This is important here for four major reasons.

• They are a part of Virutual Reality. That is, when you sit at a table, you sit at a table not a t-a-b-l-e: You sit at a physical object that you see.
• Data Density: "A picture is worth a thousand words" I can use 8 or 9 pictures across the screen to lead to the same number of places that would take 50 or 60 lines down a page to name and explain so that you could understand it.
• Age Appopriate: How many little girls still in rubber panties do you know that can read? Besides which if you are in rubber, especially a rubber diaper, then you will be too distracted and Mommy, Mistress or Stepmother would have to read things to you
• Mood enhancement: DOING IS BEING! part of doing is to be at the places of the kind of things that are done. These places have a look and feel. that is, a look that calls up or suggests or even elicits feelings. A Little Girl place where Little Girl things are done should look like a little girl place, this is best done with graphics and images. If you want to do something with a tiara then a tiara is what you ought to touch. the same is true with a dress or rubber panties. Pictures are complete and immediate, to see them is to umderstand and feel what they denote and connote instantly. and the feelings they call up are uniquely yours

In all the incarnations of RUFFLES & RIBBONS GIRLS' HOME, and all the visitors, I have gotten only one or two compaints about the format. The whole thing has the activeness of phone sex and the impact of porn (visual stimulation and immediacy) on the right kind of person. That is why we say "What You See is What You Get" and some of that is literally true.