By clicking on a friend’s blog’s link, I was brought to Globle Voices Online. That actual link from the friend’s page is about Wikipedia being blocked from certain regions/areas of mainland China. But that is not the point here.

What caught my attention first was the green area near the top of all pages, the section that contains links to all regions. I have seen it somewhere!

I cannot remember the name of that type of arrangement. A friend of mine once spent his sleepless nights coming up with a page similar to that for frequencies of words from his AIM chats. Here, the font sizes are proportional to the number of articles related to that keyword. It’s quite neat huh? It’s a visual cue to readers what the popular topics are.

Traditional alternatives to the same result/intention include ranking, marking as bold, highlighting only the top results, etc. However, by displaying information this way, the readers’ experience is un-intruded when they need to go to a particular keyword or for frequent visits.