- From: Orion Adrian <orion.adrian@gmail.com>
- Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 08:44:45 -0400
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> Orion Adrian writes: > > I believe that there is a target complexity for every situation that is the > right amount for your target audience. > ... Some features work best when they exist either everywhere or in most > places. > ... My suggestion is to leave the back link in there. > _ _ _ _ _ > > At my website the search engine is never more than one click away. I have > even implemented Alt+4 to get to it, the "standard" access key to get to a > search engine (nobody knows about it). Can you ask for more? Why have search > on every page? Blind people have to listen to all that crap and keyboard > users need to tab through it. Yes, but that is placing an essential feature a click away as opposed to right there. Search is a very commonly used feature especially if you're looking for something specific, but don't have a link as in the 404 scenario. As for blind users. I feel for them, I really do. And I will continue to fight for them as often as I can, but I don't hurt the usability of the majority to help the minority. I will help the minority as long as it doesn't hurt the majority. And screen reader's ability to skip content is something that should be considered critical functionality. > I will certainly continue to go for lightweight pages with as little noise > as possible, with full focus on the main task ahead. I agree with reducing noise. I don't consider search on a 404 page noise. I don't consider placing the most common links on a 404 page noise. These are all decent uses of screen real estate. > Orion is even in favor of "Back" links in error messages. "Back" links > should almost never be used. We have that functionality in the browser, and > in the keyboard. Are you trying to make me sound incompetent or crazy? Back links shouldn't be used except where you're saying you can go _back_ to get away from this page. If you're going to post a message that says you can go back then it hurts you none to make that a link that does the action. What I said in the previous e-mail is that I could find no significant usability benefit in not telling them about going back. Going back is almost always a useful thing to do and usually people's first response to a 404 error because it has prooven the most effective thing to do. -- Orion Adrian
Received on Tuesday, 25 July 2006 12:44:53 UTC