This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.authoring.site-design Subject: Re: Handling repetitive content dan@tobias.name (Daniel R. Tobias) writes: >"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tut.fi> wrote in message news:<Xns929A48EFC46C8jkorpelacstutfi@193.229.0.31>... >> > Newspapers do have a table of contents >> >> Indeed. So do many books. That was my point. >> >> They have _a_ table of content, which the user can access. Sometimes >> it's in the beginning, sometimes at the end, sometimes even on page 6 >> or so. But we can live with it. >Some magazines can get pretty annoying when they try to see how many >ads they can get users to page through to find the table of >contents... and then annoy you some more when you've finally made it >to the contents page, ...and you flip it over and see that they've stuck additional ads between the leafs of a two-page table of contents. I used to rip the first half dozen pages out of my issues of Wired, and then scotch tape the two table of contents pages together. Then I stopped reading Wired. Anyway, to run with this book analogy a bit... it is true that book pages aren't as cluttered with "navigation aids" as a typical web site. On the other hand, most books do have some navigational information at the top of the page (book title, chapter title, page numbers... and isn't it annoying when you discover that the book you're looking at has no visible chapter title over on the upper left, and instead repeats the book title on both leafs?). We might include the (already mentioned) thickness of the pages as a further visual cue as to where you are in it. And while we're on the subject of navigational peeves: I personally find it *really* annoying if a book doesn't have trimmed pages, so that if you try and thumb through it, the pages flip by in big chunks rather than one-at-a-time? This is getting all too common in new hardbacks, even by once reputable publishers like Viking. Someone in this thread was asserting that "books are a linear medium", but I submit that this is complete nonsense. Currently, I'm reading "The Emperor's New Mind" by Roger Penrose, and as is typical with halfway serious books, there are often footnotes on the page (indicated by an asterix), and footnotes at the end of the chapter (indicated by superscript), and references to other written works (indicated by author name and date in brackets -- and you need to refer to an appendix to find the title of the work being referred to). Further, Penrose always places his remarks against a backdrop of an outline of the argument he's making, so he often refers back to something he discussed several chapters ago, or refers forward, and promises to deal with something in more detail later. If you try and read this book in a "linear" fashion, you're going to be awfully confused by the footnotes at the end of the chapter, because as is typical of subscripted footnotes, these are effectively one-way links (much like HTTP): you can go from the text to the footnote, but trying to find the place in the text some interesting looking footnote is attached to is fairly difficult: you need to visually scan for the correct itty-bitty superscript number. Anyway, a moment's thought should show that books have a definite hypertext character about them: some have more cross-linking than others, that's all. So, what are the differences between books and webpages? With the web: I. Pixels are more valuable, for two reasons: (1) screen resolution is poor; (2) you need to wait for transmission of the pixels over the network. II. More complex cross-linking is possible, at least in theory, e.g. you could have a set of footnotes with explicit back-links to make it possible to read them "backwards" (but I've never seen this done). III. The text is electronic, and therefore indexed automatically (e.g. by google); and is also searchable using the browser's find feature. By the way, I think it's interesting that doing a text search is supposed to be beyond the capabilities of a typical user. For example, if you wanted me to be able to navigate all the pages on your site, I personally would probably be happy with a single link to an elaborate "Table of Contents" page of indefinite length, which I could then search for anything I was interested in. In general, looking over that list of three roman numerals, I think I and III definitely argue against putting more "navigation" functions on every page. Point II is the one thing that might argue for it, but I have trouble thinking of sites that are that complex without seeming too complex (e.g. like a business that's bought two other business at random, and is now trying to pretend that there's some "synergy" between them by sticking them all on one web site). >A lot more of the design of magazines is aimed at pleasing >the advertisers than the readers, it seems. And >unfortunately, much Web site design is the same way (to >bring this back on topic). I would put it a little differently: I think the feedback between customers and magazine editors is so weak that they just have no idea what they're doing. All they can do is imitate what they see all the other magazines doing, and hope that they're not screwing up *too* badly. The analogy to web site "design" is probably obvious.