Re: Links to external content maintaining navigation

>4.  By not clearly identifying that you are sending people to an 
>external page, you are risking a lawsuit.

*There's* a laugh. You can link to anything at any time, absurd 
American lower-court rulings on deep linking notwithstanding.

In fact, I would invite the author of the original site to link to as 
many "external pages" as one possibly can merely to spite this 
risibly misleading advice.

>If you are going to frame someone's page on your site, you should 
>get permission

*That* is a different story, and one could quite arguably require 
such permission. But it's *arguable*.

>and make it explicitly clear-- not just to people using screen 
>readers-- that the page is on someone else's site.

Wow. Like URLs and titles can't do that already. If you must, use a 
little icon with alt text.

--

Meanwhile:

>But as a portal, users would come to us because of our collection of 
>links to other sites. We expect that they would spend some time 
>browsing an external site, then want to come back to our site for 
>more links. The back button becomes impractical after so many links 
>are followed.

Ridiculous. It's not as though the button wears out with use like a shoe heel.

>I see this as a usability issue as opposed to a stickiness issue. We 
>don't want to control the users' experience, just help facilitate it.

In the way that Microsoft XP registration "helps" XP owners.

It's very simple. Set an option on your page to open links in new 
windows. People can then work with the Back button or in separate 
windows as they wish.

>How can we make the experience practical and useful for the user who 
>uses our site as a launching base but will want to return several 
>times during a session?

I don't see how this description applies specially to your newfangled 
site yet fails to apply to every single other HTML document on the 
Web.

Parties involved here have deep misunderstandings of how the Web 
actually works.
-- 
         Joe Clark | joeclark@joeclark.org | <http://joeclark.org/access/>
         Accessibility articles, resources, and critiques ||
           "I do not pretend to understand the mind of Joe Clark"
           -- Larry Goldberg

Received on Tuesday, 16 October 2001 15:46:24 UTC