Re: flame: choose _here_ to get information
Richard W Wiggins <WIGGINS@msu.edu>
Message-id: <9308030521.AA05710@dxmint.cern.ch>
Date: Tue, 03 Aug 93 01:15:03 EDT
From: Richard W Wiggins <WIGGINS@msu.edu>
Subject: Re: flame: choose _here_ to get information
To: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>, www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
In-reply-to: Your message of Mon, 2 Aug 1993 18:02:50 PDT
Status: RO
....
>The first is the _here_ syndrome, e.g.:
>
> Information about Blah Blah Blah is available by clicking _here_.
>
>where the word _here_ is the link. This style is really awkward; when
>you click on 'here', you have to look around to make sure it is the
>*right* here. Let me urge you, when you construct your HTML page, to
>make sure that the thing-you-click is actually some kind of title for
>what it is when you click there. E.g. say
>
> Information about _Blah Blah Blah_ is now available.
Point well taken, but here is a devil's advocate exception:
For initial pages and for some menus, the click _here_ business
makes sense. It's a way to make things clear for folks new to
the Web and to hypertext in general. Yes, I know: folks should
be able to pick that up quickly on a demo page. But all of our
home pages will be demo pages for some new users.
Furthermore: Even if it's readable, it's still sometimes silly.
Example: Here at MSU some colleagues have set up "Personal Pages"
with online data including photos, resumes, etc. One colleague
has the following two lines:
My _contact information_ is available.
My _personal data_ is available.
It's readable English, but not really much more sensical than
"Click _here_ for my contact information." It might be better
to just go with a short menu:
Here are more documents you might want to look at:
_Personal Data_
_Contact Information_
...
/Rich Wiggins, Michigan State U