In which James discovers some rather nifty website coding

I've just been idly reading an article on the NY Times website. It was interesting, but that's not what really grabbed my attention. It was what I read when I got to the end of the article:

"Tips

To find reference information about the words used in this article, double-click on any word, phrase or name. A new window will open with a dictionary definition or encyclopedia entry."

Let's just read that again. Double-click on any word in the article. I tried it. Several times. It works.

This is awesome.

I might even go so far as to say somewhat revolutionary.

Here's why:

1. Pretty much everyone in the world who will be reading this knows what a double-click is. It's a standard term.
2. The article looks perfectly normal. There are no bizarre underlines, no odd highlighting: just nice clear text.
3. If you know everything about the article, you won't get annoyed by pop-ups explaining things you already know about.
4. The code is all in place. Whoever writes the article doesn't have to trawl through it wondering which terms might confuse people.
5. It beats Fitt's Law right out of the park.

In fact, there are only two ways I can think of to improve this system. First, the search term really does open in a new window. Even in Firefox, a new window popped up here. That's fairly annoying. I'd propose some sort of hovering sub-window, but then I suppose you have the problem of how much information you need on the subject. I'm not quite sure how to solve this one. Secondly, I only found out about this at the end of the article. I could easily have given up part of the way through had I decided I couldn't cope. The solution? Put the encyclopaedia information at the top. Simple.

But overall, hats off to the NY Times for doing something clever, doing it right and not feeling the need to make the average reader feel stupid.