Re: Inline links with large-enough activation (touch) target (rough idea)

On 14/11/2016 17:43, Detlev Fischer wrote:
> If the inline link is clearly visible (underlined / rendered bold,
> strongly different color, whatever) I do not see a decisive advantage
> in havong a visible padding going beyond the link text.

The background color in my example is there to visualise what's actually 
going on. It's not intended for production. It helps visualise what my 
example's doing in terms of enlarging the standard target size for the 
inline link.

> The practical
> problem touch users have is to hit the right line if above or below
> is another link, especially as the finger obscures the target. So I
> think the actual separation by line height would the factor needed to
> facilitate touch activation in a scenario of lots of inline links in
> a piece of text.

Yes, to make absolutely sure things work best for touch users, you'd 
choose a much higher line height. My demo was only there to show an 
approach in scenarios where this is not desired/possible, as that was 
often cited on this list and in meetings as a problem that was 
impossible to tackle somehow.

> As to the size of the target, I had previously proposed to require
> more specifically that *at least one dimension* of the target is 50
> px wide AND that the other, if narrower (as is the case with, say,
> 11pt inline text) would need a separation of 50 px measured from the
> centrer of target to the centre of the adjacent target (if there is
> one).

If a user has potential difficulty accurately pinpointing a small target 
(with their finger, wand, whatever other input they're using), then I'd 
posit that only solving this for one dimension still leaves half the 
problem unsolved. How narrow would the other dimension be allowed to be? 
Extreme case a rectangle that's 50px high by 1px wide...or we define 
ANOTHER minimum size for the second dimension, which gets really messy?

> 11p pt inline links *not* surrounded by other adjacent links above or
> below would usually pose no problem for touch activation - and as the
> link text is usually be longer than one or a few characters, the
> requirement for 50px width would usually be met. (Of course there are
> edge cases like linked footnote numbers and the like.)

They don't? I find that I often have to hit the screen multiple times to 
hit the exact standard hit target area for a small link that's 
inline...and I don't have any particular issues such as tremors or similar.

> I agree wit Alastair that the overlap of the link padding of same
> colour would be problematic as it ia not clear which link is on top
> and separation is not easy. There may even be cases where adjacent
> links in two lines might be construed as one, etc. etc.

And again, my example was not meant to be a cure-all. Only a 
demonstration of how activation target area can be increased even for 
inline links/controls.

P
-- 
Patrick H. Lauke

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Received on Monday, 14 November 2016 17:45:48 UTC