Re: too many hyperlinks in a topic?

Subject: Re: too many hyperlinks in a topic?
From: "David Castro" <thejavaguy -at- gmail -dot- com>
To: e-letter <inpost -at- gmail -dot- com>
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2006 11:40:08 -0400

On 9/16/06, e-letter <inpost -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:

I'm reviewing a (java)help document that has been critised as having
excessive hyperlinks in each topic, such that readers are easily
diverted and become 'lost' from the original topic that they were
reading.

A silly question, I admit, but is there is consensus or general rule
of thumb as to what consititutes "excessive hyperlinks"?

Earlier this week, I emailed someone who said she worked on Borland's
online help to ask her if she was at all responsible for the overview
topics in the online help for Delphi 3. They were heavy with links,
taking you to more detailed explanations of each of the overview
topics that were being briefly covered in the overview topic. I LOVED
those topics, as they gave me a starting point that centered around a
single topic; the links were frequently were all over the place in the
TOC (I guess it was more like an index than a table of contents in
that regard). I have created the same kind of link-heavy overview
topics in online help that I've written for more than one product.

That said, I can see where you might not want to have a bunch of links
in, say, a procedural topic. You don't want readers to move to a new
topic while they're in the middle of a set of steps. In those topics,
you might consider moving the links down into a See Also section at
the bottom of the topic.

--
-David Castro
thejavaguy -at- gmail -dot- com
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References:
too many hyperlinks in a topic?: From: e-letter

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