Subsections on this page:
# The ten commandments of good WWWeb design
# Why "HyperTerrorist"?
# The two basic principles of distributed hypertext
# The eight categories of design problem
[Next-- The Secret of Eternal Happiness!]
[Prev] or [Prior] buttons are also nice.
The academic style is uptight and obscure, expecting you to plod thru it from one end to the other, like a homework assignment! Combine this with the typical freshman designer's eagerness to include as many links as possible, and you get these sites that dole out their meagre contents in droplet-sized doses, enwrapped in extravagantly formal stationery-templates, until you just want to scream with the frustration...
If you're just out wandering, with nothing but time to kill, then clicking on everything that's highlighted blue might be a soothingly mindless way to go...
But more and more, people are hoping to use the WWWeb as an information utility, a fantastical substitute for the encyclopedia... and so far, it's really bad at this!
No matter what startingpoint you choose-- Yahoo or Lycos or Altavista or DejaNews-- for most questions, you'll have to spend tens of minutes wading thru hotlist after hotlist, trying to find someone who's actually said something on the topic...
So when you offer a table of contents (eg.) make it an "analytic ToC" that includes a summary of each chapter. This will allow the reader to skip material she already knows (or could care less about!).
Another way to look at this is that information should be supplied in layers with all the most important items in the top layers (along with brief hints of the less important details to be found deeper down).
Second principles
The academic theorists never predicted that it would matter so much, when links take several seconds or more to load.
With their assumption of instantaneous loading (or zero 'latency') it seemed to make sense to break up hypertexts into lots and lots of paragraph-sized bites... but this turns out not to work well, at all.
Very often, the best solution to a hypertext design problem will turn out to be not using a link to a second document, but rather integrating all the material into the same file.
A hypertext site needs to strike a balance between making it easy to find everything that's there, and making it easy to skip everything you don't care about.
1. links should summarize the high points of their target-pages
If they don't, then the reader can't make an informed choice about whether to follow them.
They should mention everything that might interest someone-- if they skip something, those readers have a right to feel cheated.
Links should not suggest more content than is there-- if it's a review of a book, don't make it look like it will be the book itself!
Be careful not to scare anyone off, by exaggerating the negative aspects of a site that has a mixed appeal.
A good stylist can suggest a lot with a few words.
Choosing which text to highlight as the anchor is also important.
It should usually be a few words that capture the essence of the link.
(Don't repeat the link every time you repeat the phrase! Once only, or people might get confused, wondering if there's new material being offered.)
As a rule of thumb, the longer the anchor text the more likely it will be clicked-- but you can't just make everthing blue!
Imagemaps have problems here. (Worst is when you can't even tell what points on the imagemap are clickable...)
Watch your html.log if you can, to see which of your links people are (and aren't) following. Rewrite the linktext if it doesn't seem to appeal to people.
How big, what file format, and where the server is are also very helpful to suggest, if you can. With very big files, or formats that require a special reader, it's bad webiquette not to warn people.
Hotlists that are just lists of bookmarks, with no commentary, are way too
common... because they're next to useless.
Put the links you like best first.
For long hotlists, sort them into sublists, not just by topic, but by the types of content they offer. If two sites are similar, they should be next to each other in the list as well.
2. the arrangement of pages and links should be simple and clear
The basic shape of WWWeb-sites is a hierarchy or set of hierarchies.
Each topic area should have an overview page that surveys all the contents of that subarea
. Pages that offer only a table of contents are a big waste, and hierarchical tables of contents where you have to click thru two or more levels are insane.
The table of contents should be an 'analytic ToC' that offers a summary
of the text, and it should offer direct links to every page 'under'
the ToC.
This way, the reader can focus in precisely on the material she cares about.
If the total quantity of text is under 32k or so, keeping it together in
a single file is probably a good idea-- link from the ToC to the text
with a #-link.
(#-links can be confusing if they don't signal that that's what they are, by including a visible "#" at the link. If the #-link leads backwards in the file, you can flag this with "^".)
If there's a lot more than 32k, you should probably break it into chapters
or pages.
(Maintaining a single ftp-file version for easy offline reading is a
thoughtful option to offer.)
Write the material so there's a natural sequence thru the various pages, and put a "Next" button at the end of each that leads to the next in sequence.
(If you forget to do this, readers will have to go back up to the ToC between each page-- the 'stairmaster fallacy'.)
Make it a text-button so that you can include a reminder of what's the next topic, or repeat the summary from the ToC. [Next: richly-linked htext]
Put a [Prev] or [Prior] button at the top, that goes the other direction.
A consistent set of navigation-buttons at the top and bottom of each page makes navigation easier and supplies unity to your site.
(Be careful, though, that pages aren't so similar you can't tell whether
you've arrived yet!)
Always have an [Up] button so people can bail out in the middle of a
sequence of pages.
If other sites link to that page, this will allow visitors to connect
with the context.
Use a #-link in the [Up], if it's needed to put you back at the 'down'
link.
A [Top] button on every page can lead to the overview of your whole site.
A closer look at navigation and site topology
For large sites, a [Map] button can connect to an overhead map of the whole site, so people can scan for pages they missed.
If you use other standard buttons, and one of them ends up linking to the page it's on... disable it, so no one will be tempted to test it.
Footnotes don't work that well in hypertext, paradoxically.
Don't put them in a separate file-- this can cause timelags jumping back
and forth.
If your file already has internal hyperlinks, mixing in footnote-hyperlinks
is probably a bad idea.
You can just have an unlinked "[1]".
Either put them at the end of each page, or even better, do what Norman O. Brown did in Love's Body and put them at the end of each paragraph!
A standard 'footer' should signal the bottom of the page (which is not always obvious). This can include the [Next] button, a feedback button, and possibly a top-of-page button. 3. take advantage of the potentials of richly linked hypertext
Links are fun.
So fun, in fact, they can sometimes distract you from good content.
But if you use them wisely, they'll draw your readers into the subject, engaging their attention instead of fragmenting it.
Use Altavista to find good
resources to link to.
(Sorting out the best takes time but is a great contribution.)
Shape your material so as to unify the resources with minimal duplication.
This is an enormous challenge, because so many overlapping perspectives
exist.
Be careful not to link to something great at the top of your page-- your readers may wander off and never come back.
Some other uses for links, including suspense, esthetic unity, branching storylines, and annotations.
[notes to myself] news archiving good news postings (by thread) trim headers-- see below email feedback ftp (.Z trick) media-- gifs, sounds, movies, programs exciting but frivolous pages should be self-explanatory so others can link directly Make sure the title will be descriptive if it's bookmarked.Include [Up] links so that visitors can explore your full site.
Author-info is usually a good idea. You can combine it with a mailto: link, so people can send you (or the author) feedback.
Careful about dated references. A 'Latest revision' date is helpful. 'New' flags for new additions may be useful. publicize your site to reach the widest audience comp.infosystems.www.announce other newsgroups signature Stay visible in the newsgroup, and make yourself useful. Compile and post a FAQ. http://www.submit-it.com One form will put you on 15 search engines of your choice Yahoo Point Excite Altavista Lycos Visit related sites and email their owners an invitation to link. The mass media informational pages should be optimized for text-only browsers Many people turn off images for serious surfing. Use ALT text. Realize imagemaps won't display. Don't count on italics being visible. Realize anchor text may be highlighted as inverse video, disrupting the text's flow, and making it hard to read. Lynx users have to tab thru anchors, so try not to have too many on each 'page' (~24 lines). If you must, try to use #-tocs to allow them to jump close to the target link. html quirks make page layout problematic SGML is an imperfect startingpoint. HTML had very modest ambitions. 'Proper' HTML is pretty rigid, and validators usually insist on a lot of petty formalities. Browsers' implementations of HTML are all subtly different. Most omit some features. Most implement some 'wrong'. All have their own display quirks. Netscape is madly creating their own variants. Don't bother with EM and STRONG. Use i and b.
alt text not displayed by (older?) Netscapes This is centered on everything!
for email-- 80-columns the usual principles of good communication apply The clearer you write, the better. Most visitors will not be experts, or geniuses. Taking a stand is usually more interesting than trying to be detached. Don't brag. "A James Joyce homepage" is better than "The James Joyce homepage". Summarize your most important points at the beginning. Short paragraphs work better than long ones. A spellchecker is a good idea. HTML validators can catch some problems, but tend to be too picky.[Up] [Map] [Robot Wisdom home page] (Feedback)