[thelist] Re: Advice on page format

[Techwatcher]

Hi, Rebecca --

I've been away from evolt a few days... In the process of moving. (-8

I had the same design problem (conceptually) in creating the Friend's
Web site (for Charlotte Friends Meeting): How to let everyone see
everything they can get to, without making them scroll down very long
lists. My solution (warning: ugly table kludge!) was to code a series
of organized drop-down menus along the top of the site's pages
(example, charlottefriendsmeeting.org).

I believe you could also code it, more elegantly, using CSS -- at least
along one side of the page. To copy my approach, divide up your lists
into reasonably organized sublists, then go get a script called
Jumpncnt from an ingenious fellow in Australia. Caveat: since I'm not
familiar with the way browsers for the blind interprete drop-down
menus, I can't be sure this approach is accessible. We're a small
meeting, with a few deaf folk (quite a few elderly members), and at
least one is color-blind (luckily, he was the one I asked to test the
site for me as I was deciding on colors!), but we have no blind members.

One other point about Jumpncnt: it uses an @referer variable for
security, so if browsers come to your site through a frame, they'll see
an error message. But for a college department's site, that would
probably be common.

Btw, note that it *doesn't matter* whether people realize what page
they're on. On my own site, accesswriters.com (not yet publicly open,
but pre-CSS version practically finished), the bookshop is actually 2
pages. The shelf link currently depends on whether you've picked a
fiction or non-fiction subject (internal links across two pages). When
we have more books, I fully intend to use the same approach accross
several pages. I doubt many browsers notice the address bar switches to
bookshp2.shtml for the non-fiction shelves -- and if they do, it
doesn't matter!
_________
>From: Rebecca O Connell <rloconne at unity.ncsu.edu>
To: <thelist at lists.evolt.org>
Subject: [thelist] Advice on page format
Reply-To: thelist at lists.evolt.org

I am the webmaster of a small departmental website.  I have an
Administrative page that starts with a list of all the available
forms.  The
forms are each linked to a blurb further down the page that has the
form's
name, a paragraph describing what to do with the form, and links
to .pdf and
.doc (or .xls) versions of the form. The page has gotten very large,
and I
want to split it up into one main page, with the list, and three
subpages,
with the blurbs and form links.

My problem is, right now these links send the viewer further down the
same
page.  If I divide the page up and point the links to where the blurb is
people may not realize they've been sent to a new page, and get confused
(especially since the thing they're looking at used to be on the same
page).
If I point all of the links to the top of the appropriate page the
appropriate blurb may be 'below the fold', also causing confusion.

I could point the link to the top of the appropriate page and then have
another list of forms at the top of the new page (it would be a short
list,
so they should be able to find their form) but then they would have to
click
on the same link twice to get where they're going.

I could have links to the new subpages with no links to specific forms,
but
people won't be able to tell if we have the form they need or not, and
may
not bother to click through and check.

Or I could have links to the new pages followed by unlinked lists of the
forms that are on the new pages, but I'm afraid this is going to be
confusing and annoying, since are used to getting to the forms directly
from
this part of the page.

I would appreciate any suggestions for a good compromised measure that
will
allow the page to grow as our bureaucracy grows.  If anyone is
interested,
the present page can be seen at
http://www.mse.ncsu.edu/administrative.html.

Thanks in advance,
Rebecca


Cheers