Re: curricula comments I promised

Maria... thanks for your comments.  My responses are merged with your
original message and preceded by CPL::

At 25/06/99 11:11 AM , Marja-Riitta Koivunen wrote:
>The curriculum slides look great.
>
>I have couple of suggestions (I hope it is not too late already).
>
>- It would help navigation to have a link to the current checkpoint and
>guideline also from the beginning of the slide (e.g. when you are in an
>example for 4.1). It could be simply a link from the number 4.1 (The 4
>would point to guideline 4 and 1 to checkpoint 4.1). This would take some
>time for users to figure out. Maybe something like GL 4/CP 1 would be
>better or something like the following:
>
>Guideline
>5. Create ... that transform gracefully
>
>Checkpoints for
>"start link" 5. Create ... "end link"
>
>Example for
>"start link" 5.2 - For data tables that have two or more logical levels of
>row or column headers, use markup to associate data cells and header cells.
>"end link"
>
>This is still not perfect as it is difficult to get the link to guideline
>to fit nicely but this is the idea.
>

CPL:: I (we) have been struggling with inter-set navigation concepts for
some time, and the answer is not easy to find.  

In my opinion, people tend to follow links if they look important.  If we
make most of the title of each slide a link (as in your second major
possibility) people will follow it.  In this scenario they will follow it
backwards (or up the chain) to a less detailed slide.  To me, this would
prove frustrating at least until I realized I shouldn't click on that
prominent link unless I truly wanted to pop back up a level.  On that
basis, I would lean more towards your suggestion of making links out of
just the numbers (e.g. 5 (linked to guideline 5).1(linked to checkpoint
5.1)).  It would be simple to explain this convention in the introductory
set (as other conventions are described.)  It would be somewhat more
difficult to revise the code on 100+ slides, but it is doable.  I think I
will hold off on this until after my vacation.  Any such change will be
fairly time intensive (but not actually difficult).


>I also thought of putting the previous titles at the beginning of the page
>with small font. However, it is kind of nice having a big title Guideline,
>Checkpoint or Example right at the beginning.
>
>I actually wanted to test these a bit and that is why they are late but I
>just did not have the time for it.
>
>- At the bottom of the page is "Next slide: Checkpoint 4.2" but that does
>not give much more information. Is it supposed to be a link? Couldn't it be
>a similar arrow navigation as at the beginning of the page so there is no
>need to go to top of the page when you only want to continue forward?
>
CPL:: The "Next slide: Checkpoint x" statement is intended to tell the user
if  content of the current slide is continued on the next page. Originally
I only included the wording on slides that were actually continued.  At
some point, maybe because I forgot why I did it originally, I added the
basic text to each slide.  That text could be made a link to take the user
to the next page, or, as you suggest, a duplicate arrow nav-bar could be
added to each slide to save the user from having to "page up".  I was
worried that the page would get too busy, and include too many links for
screen-reader users to listen to, but maybe the improved navigation would
outweigh that possibility.  This topic has come up before, but I think I
filed it for future consideration.  I would like to hear from the WG what
they think about this concept.

>- slide 44, it would be great to have an audio link that actually reads the
>table to the user
>
CPL:: Good Idea!  Hey Geoff - head's up.  I will toss this task you, our
multimedia guru. Perhaps you can make up some simple .WAV (or other easily
usable format) files and read the bad and good tables.  If Geoff can't, I
will do it when I get back from vacation.  Even better, maybe someone out
there can record a screen-reader speaking the table for more realism.

>
>- some other things were already commented
>
>Marja

Cheers!
Chuck 
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Received on Monday, 28 June 1999 18:47:28 UTC