> From: Ian Clark > > On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 4:07 AM, Sherlock, Ric wrote: > > Example. > The scary words Monadic and Dyadic being the first things to hit you on > a page. > Remedy: try offering additional links: Monadic [...What's this?] ... > Dyadic [...What's this?] ... -rather than hyperlinking just the words > Monadic and Dyadic. It's not clear to a novice you'll go anywhere > useful if you click a link saying Monadic, of all things! > Find a novice and ask her: what do you think you'd see if you clicked > that word? > Many official websites for the general public use this trick: it works.
This sounds like a very good suggestion to me. The next trick will be to add the link without making it look yuk! > Another example. > The forbidding blue box at the top right. > Actually it whispers "for official use only" -- so the novice will > filter it out, simply won't see it. > Find a novice and ask her. Not: did you see that blue box? (answer: > yes of course) but: what's the Part of Speech of "Ceiling"? > Remedy: try sticking a link below it: "[...What's this blue box all > about?]" Can you suggest anything we might do to make the blue box less forbidding? Please feel free to change the current page to illustrate if that is easiest. > It goes without saying that these links are best provided on the > template. They'll be on every page, but they'll only be clicked once. > The big risk is they won't be clicked at all -- and the novice turns > round and asks the very question they're there to answer. (Seen it > happen.) > > Correct use of colour. > (Robertson, P. J., A guide to using color on alphanumeric displays. > IBM United Kingdom Laboratories, Winchester : 1979) > Colour is supremely good for two things -- and two only: (a) drawing > the eye, (b) implicitly asserting a relationship between separated > objects. It's a survival mechanism: it lets you recognise a tiger even > if there's a big tree trunk splitting its retinal image in two. But > use colour sparingly, i.e. to support only one task at a time. > Otherwise it soon becomes visual noise. > > If using colour for task support, avoid it for decoration. Even very > intelligent people don't know the difference between task support and > decoration when it comes to colour. Don't believe me? Then ask what > task is supported by exhaustively colouring every verb, conjunction, > etc (...suggested but not used yet). I must admit I'm a little bit lost here. My intention was that the colours should help distinguish the part-of-speech that each primitive belongs to. However I get the feeling that is the wrong answer or that I'm missing a bigger point. My only agenda is that this should be a useful resource to J learners, so please feel free to suggest and/or change whatever you think might help us towards that goal - it sounds like you know what you're talking about!! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
