RE: The humbling reality of writing multi-page articles

Subject: RE: The humbling reality of writing multi-page articles
From: "Darren Barefoot" <darren -dot- barefoot -at- capeclear -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 15:21:30 +0100


Indeed, I'm one of those people who would prefer to scroll instead of
click "next page". This is particularly applicable when I'm on a dial-up
connection, in that I can start reading the page (or, in fact, skim much
of it) before the page is done loading. However, in some usability book
somewhere I read that it was good practice not to permit people to
scroll more than a couple of "screens" past their position at the top of
the page. I'm not sure what the logic for this was, or whether this has
changed now that the average user is a lot more scroll-savvy, but that's
what the decision was based on. I expect that part of it is avoiding the
sense of information overload one gets as the "scroll nub" (for want of
a better term--what is that thing called?) gets smaller and smaller.

We also plan to implement ye olde "print-friendly" functionality, but
haven't gotten around to it yet. DB.



> -----Original Message-----
> From: bounce-techwr-l-65243 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
> [mailto:bounce-techwr-l-65243 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com] On Behalf Of
> Anameier, Christine A - Eagan, MN
> Sent: 10 September 2002 13:59
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: Re:The humbling reality of writing multi-page articles
>
>
>
> (Chiming in a little late on this one; I was out yesterday.)
>
> Darren, have you considered providing an alternate version
> that contains the whole article in one web page? I know it
> would require a lot of scrolling to read, but some people
> would rather scroll than click "next page" links. I don't
> have any studies to back this up, just my own experience: if
> something spans two or more web pages, I start looking for
> the "Print version" (i.e., single-page
> version) link. If there is no print version, I bail unless I
> really, really want to read that article. Then I grumble
> every time I click the "next page" link.
>
> Christine

>


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References:
Re:The humbling reality of writing multi-page articles: From: Anameier, Christine A - Eagan, MN

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