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This is the World Wide Web page for the Manchester Institute for Popular Culture, a postgraduate research unit based at Manchester Metropolitan University, in Manchester, United Kingdom.

The 'website' consists of a series of 'webpages', each containing interesting information, broken down into areas of activity. You can access these pages by selecting 'hyperlinks' i.e. by using the mouse to click on words on the pages underlined in blue. These hyperlinks are littered about the text of the pages where appropriate.

There are also 'control strips' at top and bottom of every page. These enable you to jump from one 'area' of the website to another at any point. Available links will appear underlined in colour - the link to the webpage currently being viewed will not be underlined, as you are already there! When at the bottom of a page, you can use the control strip to jump back to the top of the page by activating 'top'. You can of course use your browsers main controls (back, forward, the scroll bars) to navigate through the pages.

In the 'people' space, there are email addresses built as hyperlinks. To activate these usefully, you need to set your browser up with details of your email address and software. Otherwise, jot down the email addresses for later.

A good online guide to using the Internet exists at http://www.mailbase.ac.uk:8080/ife/. Just click'n'go.

Accessible: The pages are designed for Netscape 1.1N+ browsers or equivalent, but should be fairly legible on other browsers.
Quick to download: Judicious use of images. Lengthy pieces of work are usually broken into 3-4 separate pages.
Easy to navigate: Control strip at top and bottom of pages for easy navigation.
Consistent: Pages designed to be consistent throughout site in terms of navigation tools and "look'n'feel", though allowing for variation and diversity.
Aesthetics: Spare, clean spaces where possible. By rejecting complex graphics in favour of differing font sizes and plain white backgrounds, the pages should be quicker to download, but still present an aesthetically pleasing environment (hopefully). Graphical work is likely to increase in future as the Net infrastructure hopefully becomes more sophisticated.
Metaphors: No metaphors are used other than the site existing as a series of spaces. Inappropriate metaphors such as highways, main streets or buildings fail to express the new nature of this medium. The site embodies the nature of the Institute itself, representing its trangressive nature: part-academic site, part intermediary in policy-making and local popular culture.
The Future: Aims are to significantly increase interactivity and content over next few versions. A long-term strategy exists to incorporate more people into the editorial content and construction of the site. Each new version of the website may present new models of interacting with information, a new graphical face, and new content. Hopefully.