The problem with a "goto pagenumber" function is that page numbers tend to be totally unintuitive. I have worked on magazines where we had a "goto" number. It made it easy for readers of the magazine get to a specific page once they are on the website, and spared the editors from having to know in advance what a URL would be. Other benefits included the ease of printing a bold number vs. a URL.
But, for bookmarking purposes, you don't want those numbers, because then there is nothing to indicate to people what they have bookmarked (although the page title is often an excellent balance to that), and no easy way for people to recover if they type in a wrong URL (also not necessarily less of a problem with URLs unless you are using very simple, human-readable URLs and site presentation architecture). So, page numbers can be good ways to get people from print to a location online, but they should be used as redirects, not as final destinations, in my experience. And, even when not used as redirects, they are still closer to human-readable than the garbage presented as URLs by many CMSs--so you aren't necessarily hurting anything by implementing them, you just aren't making things as easy on site visitors as possible. ari On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 3:04 AM, Hanan Cohen <hanan at mada.org.il> wrote: > Shalom, > > Since this is my first post to this list I will introduce myself. > > My name is Hanan Cohen and I am the new Webmaster of the Bloomfield > Science Museum Jerusalem, Israel. http://www.mada.org.il/en/ . I am > "new" in the sense that I have been a short time on this job and also in > the sense that I am new to museums as a professional. > > One of the issues I have been thinking about since starting here is how > to connect the physical world to the web. We know there is a problem of > directing people from paper to web and also from speech to web. At the > most, we direct people to a top directory and they somehow manage from > there. > > The Bloomfield Science Museum strives to be an educational resource for > its visitors - the general public and the formal education system. > > Writing long URL's on paper in order to propose content on our site to > our audience is a problem. > > Then I had an idea. > > Every page on our site has a unique, short ID. > > I have created a new box that is displayed on every page. > > The box says "go to page number:", has an input line and below that > "current page number: wxyz" > > When I want to direct someone to a page, all I have to do is see in what > page number I am at and write or say a short number. > > The recipient just has to type a short number and go directly to the > intended page. No need to type a long URL or click through menus. > > Now, we at the museum, will have to learn how to use this feature in our > publications, displays and daily use of the website. It's a whole new > way of thinking which we will have to develop. I hope the new feature > will really solve the problem it tackles. > > I would be grateful for any feedback on this solution and its > implementation. > > Currently, there isn't much English content on the site. To get a better > experience of the page number idea, I suggest visiting the "Exhibitions" > section. > > Thanks, > > Hanan Cohen - Webmaster > Bloomfield Science Museum Jerusalem > http://www.mada.org.il > _______________________________________________ > You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer > Network (http://www.mcn.edu) > > To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu > > To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l > > The MCN-L archives can be found at: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/pipermail/mcn-l/ >
