Best practices for hyperlinking in help?

[Leonard C. Porrello]

I agree that shorter pages are better. Ideally, any given task would fit
in the viewable area of a single page displayed in a web browser sized
to 800x900 (or fewer) pixels. However, writing to do so would break
apart work flows illogically.

A user would jump into the middle of a page when, for example, searching
for the meaning of or permitted values for a give field within a
workflow. He would access the field via a link to field in the index. It
would be silly to force a user who is interested in only one field to
start at the top of a page/workflow.

Leonard C. Porrello
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Combs, Richard [mailto:richard.combs at Polycom.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 1:27 PM
To: Leonard C. Porrello; techwr-l at lists.techwr-l.com
Subject: RE: Best practices for hyperlinking in help?

Leonard C. Porrello wrote:

> My thinking has been along the same lines. However, I am concerned for
> the reader who jumps into the middle of a page and misses the
hyperlinks
> at the top of the page.

But YOU control whether (and where) readers can jump into the middle of
a page. You also control the length of the pages. 

Personally, I'd rather be presented with shorter pages -- or, if a topic
simply must be lengthy, a link to the top, not the middle -- instead of
seeing scores of hyperlinks to the same handful of glossary items. 

IMHO, YMMV, etc.

Richard


Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
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rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
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