[thelist] Advice on page format

[Tom Dell'Aringa]

Rebecca,

I don't know what your design and platform constraints are, but I would offer this as an idea to
mull over. I'm guessing your users are fairly familiar with the blurbs and don't read them often
or more than a couple times.

You could use the diplay style to hide/show the blurb directly under each form, with some kind of
button to say click for blurb. Then you could list out your items by category, and have the pdf /
doc link right after the name of the item. IE

Somesuch Form or Document :: PDF | DOC
[hidden blurb, shown when needed]

Next Item :: PDF | DOC
[hidden..etc]

That way the link to the item is right next to the title and the extra info is only shown when
needed, plus you keep your one page.

Just my .02, maybe if you can't use this solution it will lead you to something else.

Tom
--- Rebecca O Connell <rloconne at unity.ncsu.edu> wrote:
> 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
>
>
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