You may remember my rant some time ago about sites that require you to use a specific computer platform in order to fully appreciate them. Well, through no direct effort on their own part, at long last the very large and lovely BuyBroadway site has become available to those of us who access the net on something other than a machine running Windows — primarily due to the fact that Microsoft has finally made their streaming technology, NetShow, available to other platforms.* The site claims to be optimized or "exclusively designed" for Internet Explorer, and you'll hear no argument from me. Using Netscape Navigator, this "optimization" manifests itself with pages that disappear offscreen with no scroll bars (a reload will often fix the problem) and a variety of other purely cosmetic layout problems (graphics over text, disappearing navigation frames, etc.). The site would also like as much screen real estate as you can devote to it. It also throws a lot of Java at you, so be prepared.
That said, BuyBroadway is definitely a site worth visiting. The winner of a large number of Internet organization awards, it is beautifully, if inconsistently, designed. It manages to cover a large spectrum of theatre territory without ever getting you lost. You can visit "sub sites" devoted to shows and their producers, buy tickets, posters and souvenirs, watch opening night netcasts and promo videos, and find out about a variety of theatrical organizations. The site is so huge that the best I can give is a small overview.
Depending on where you are in the site, BuyBroadway provides a number of different ways to get around its voluminous nest. There's a nearly omnipresent navigation pedestal (frame) at the bottom of most pages; the Home page features several "pull-down-and-go" menus; you can search the site from a couple of internal search pages; and of course there's a large number of cross site links on every page. But the site breaks down, basically, into three areas: Shows, Store, and Organization.
Shows: BuyBroadway is the host to the "official" web sites of a number of Broadway shows and touring productions such as Titanic, Annie, Peter Pan, and The King and I (both on Broadway and the tour). Here you can read about the shows, see production shots, watch NetShow videos, read bios. Sadly, a number of the shows here have already closed, but you can still read about them and pick up some souvenirs (rapidly becoming collectors' items).
Store: Seeming the raison d'etre for a site named Buy- anything, BuyBroadway is fairly pitch light, especially for a place that holds the title of "largest Broadway souvenir merchandiser on
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