Re: Visible, simple, accessible sites

I find site specific  back and home links to be extremely useful and
important when my initial introduction to a website is a page other than
the main page of the hierarchy, i.e. when I am using a search engine or a
reference page. It often gives me an easy way to understand the larger
context of a given page. I am generally frustrated by pages which don't
give me a way to get up to their parents.

Mitake. 

--On Friday, September 17, 1999, 4:47 PM -0400 "Leonard R. Kasday"
<kasday@ACM.org> wrote:

> I don't understand
> 
>> 2.2  Don't have back and home buttons on the page
>> Again these are confusing, as the behaviour conflicts with that
>> of Back and Home buttons on the browser.
> 
> The home button on a site takes you back to the home page of that site,
> whereas the home button on your browser takes you to the default home page
> of the browser which is independent of the site.  So I don't see a
> conflict.
> 
> I agree that the "back" button would be confusing.
> 
> Len
> 
> 
> 
> At 05:04 PM 9/17/99 GMT, John Nissen wrote:
>> 2. Simplicity
>> 
>> Then there are some points about keeping it simple for the user:
>> 
>> 2.1  Don't provide a top button (to take user to top of page)
>> This is confusing to the user.  The user has to learn to
>> scroll anyway, and it's not hard to get to the top.  If they use
>> the button rather than scrolling, then Back takes them to the
>> bottom again.  I find that irritating, but I suspect it will be
>> a source of confusion for most elderly people.
>> 
>> 2.2  Don't have back and home buttons on the page
>> Again these are confusing, as the behaviour conflicts with that
>> of Back and Home buttons on the browser.
>> 
>> 2.3  Have a hierarchy, navigated top-down
>> Keep the site hierarchical, and encourage people to enter at top level
>> (by premoting the URL for the top level page, by always refering to the
>> site by this URL, by using it as link from other sites, etc.).
>> Have links only down the hierarchy, except for cross-links where 
>> they are natural (e.g. in an index, see 2.4).
>> 
>> 2.4  Have a guide to site
>> Have a list of contents, site map, site search, and/or index to the site.
>> Such a page can help a user considerably in finding things on the site.
>> To keep with hierarchy principle, this page should be at or immediately
>> below the top level.  The information to which this page refers should
>> be at lower levels.  (The May 1999 WAI content guide violates this rule!)
>> 
>> 2.5  Avoid next/previous buttons - large pages are OK
>> The links from a higher level (e.g. table of contents) may point to 
>> different named "anchor" points in single large page at the lower level.
>>  Search results should be on single page.  (Most if not all modern
>> browsers  can start displaying the initial results while the rest of the
>> page continues to be downloaded.)
>> 
>> 2.5  Keep to a few consistent heading levels
>> Keep to three levels at most (i.e. section, subsection and
>> subsubsection),  each with consistent H t

Received on Friday, 17 September 1999 17:44:35 UTC