Kim, you may consider using a 'mouse over' effect, in such a way that the information about the file type and it's size would appears only when the mouse pointer is over the link.
This way you would still have the information, but it wouldn't "clutter" the interface. The 'cons' of this solution is that you won't have the information at a glance, only when you pass your mouse over the link...but seems to me that it's better than the previous solution you have. Besides, it's not so relevant in the first place to know what kind of document you're downloading, if all documents are supposed to be a downloadable file. It would matter if you have different behaviors for the links, like HTML files or PDF/DOC files...the previous would open a page within the browser, and the others would lauch an application. Different behaviors should be noticable and very clear distinguished. But if all links are supposed to point to downloadable files, I think you could "clean" the interface like I suggested. I saw this approach recently on Twitter. They have "cleaned" the interface, and some icons (favorites and reply to) are only visible when you pass the mouse over the post. all the best mauro -- prof. mauro pinheiro universidade federal do espírito santo centro de artes depto. de desenho industrial On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 12:34 PM, Kim Bieler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I built a site for a client a while back with a lot of links to PDFs, Word > docs, etc. At the time, I understood the best practice was to identify the > link type and document size in parens after the link: > > 2007 Strategic Report [256kb PDF] > > but I'm starting to feel like this junks up the screen a lot when you've got > a long list of links. I've seen other sites that put icons next to each > link, which seems useful for quickly identifying the link type, but a ton of > little icons is just as junky as text, if not more so. > > I'm considering dropping the file size information, since download times > aren't such an issue any more (although my client does have a certain number > of visitors from developing countries) and maybe putting the [PDF] tag in > grey, so it's less obtrusive. > > Is there a better way? Maybe I'm overlooking something obvious that would be > much more elegant. > > > -- Kim > > + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + > Kim Bieler Graphic Design > www.kbgd.com > + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
