[WSG] Breadcrumbs showing organisational structure and usability
Hi folks, My organisation manages around 7000+ pages for 100s of departments, using a CMS. Mine is the only department outside the CMS, just because we can. We have been persuaded (read: bullied) to redesign our header to exactly match that of the parent organisation. I have no problem with that per se, but theirs includes breadcrumbs, and we don't want 'em. I'm wondering what the consensus is here on their usefulness. I've always been under the impression that the purpose of breadcrumbs was to indicate to the user where they had been. However, the ones we are being urged to implement do no such thing; they simply display our organisational structure. This means that on every one of our 200-odd pages, the breadcrumbs will appear like so (we are the library): Parent Org Clinical Services Library Current page The only thing that's going to change is the current page. To me, that's not a breadcrumb trail at all. Am I wrong in my thinking? Is this a common usage? How does this benefit the user at all? I'm questioning it because of usability issues, which is how I tie it in with web standards. If this is considered off-topic, I apologise, and replies should come directly to me rather than the list. thanks, lib. *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] hello
Kat wrote: Is Web 2.0 larger than the web itself? I don't know, but it's certainly *beyond* the web. Librarians around the world have been flapping their arms and gums about Library 2.0 for ages, which, imo, is even more ridiculous than Web 2.0. lib. *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] BBC in Beta
Firefox: Yesterday it defaulted to lollipop green (*puke*), with coloured buttons. Today it's defaulting to black and white with NO coloured buttons; that whole div is just not there today. IE6: Defaults to black and white WITH coloured buttons. However the items showing and news stories are completely different to what I see in Firefox. Opera: Defaults to black and white WITH coloured buttons. The items and news are the same as in IE. So .. the default colour is different each time you go there ..? .. and depending on what browser you use, you get different boxes and different news .. ? .. and the div with the coloured buttons may or may not show up .. ? ... (I thought maybe AdBlock was interfering, but no, disabling it didn't affect anything.) I'm confused. libby On 12/19/07, John Faulds [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yeah, that's right. I can still see them and they still change the colour of the page. On Wed, 19 Dec 2007 04:31:49 +1000, Kim Kruse [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well they are on my computer! (we're talking about the 4 colored buttons that changed the colors of the page... right?) John Faulds skrev: snip No they're not. Unless you're referring to something different. *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** -- Tyssen Design www.tyssendesign.com.au Ph: (07) 3300 3303 Mb: 0405 678 590 *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
[WSG] Cites Insights: conference edition
Hi folks, Walt Crawford's Cites Insights for June is out, and is a special issue dedicated to attending and/or speaking at conferences. Download it here: http://citesandinsights.info (hit current issue), or here is the pdf direct: http://citesandinsights.info/civ7i7.pdf It is written by a library professional for librarians, so is of course heavily library-centric (so ignore all the ALA - American Libraries Association - stuff). However, there is still enough of general interest to all types of conference attendees/speakers for me to mention it here. With the Web Directions conference coming up, and numerous other web standards-related events around all our local areas, I feel it relevant to drop a single post to the list about it (notice how I got web standards in there so that this is on topic?). Topics that might be of interest to this group (repeat: ignore the library-specific sections): - Coping with conferences: tips on scheduling, planning, networking, eating, travelling, technology, blogging, twittering, backchannels, etc. - The speaking life: tips and suggestions for speakers, money and fees and negotiating, powerpoint (and how it sucks and how to do it right or not at all), leading a discussion, keynote speeches, the care and feeding of speakers, conference-speaker arrangements, travel arrangements and contracts, making the speaker happy during the event, etc. regards, lib. *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
[WSG] Talking about odd user behaviour (was Re: PopUp windows)
Hi folks, Someone wrote: One of my favourite stats is that 30% of browser activity involves using the Back button .Proceedings of the Third International World Wide Web Conference, Darmstadt, Germany (1995). To which someone else replied: and the web, users and people have changed a lot since 1995, I would say so much so that that stat would know be unreliable... I did usability testing with 10 users of a medium-sized library website 18 months ago. Every single person, withOUT exception, failed to use either the breadcrumb navigation, or the left sidebar navigation. Each time they wanted to return 'home' or to somewhere they'd been before, they simply hit 'back, back, back' until they got there. If they needed to go somewhere new to complete or begin a new task, they still didn't use the side nav, they backed up to the 'home' page to start from there. I wondered if they did it because they thought that each new task should begin on the 'home' page, but every one I asked (about half of them) said 'no', they always used a browser like that (note that they didn't say they used my site like that, they used the browser like that). I was astounded. lib. *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
[WSG] Content negotiated links: why so bad?
Hi folks, I followed a recent thread here on how people manage their links, and I made a request to our organisation's webmaster to allow MultiViews for my department's website (which I manage, and which is part of a large public organisation). I have a penchant for short, usable URLs that don't show file names, and would like to link to /mydept/training/ rather than /mydept/training.htm. His response: paste My main concern would be with how content-negotiated links get handled by search engines (both Google and Thunderstone). There is also a potential issue if there is more than one page in a folder that satisfies the content criteria. Additionally, even if we were to allow MultiViews, it is essential that the URL in any links within the pages still be the correct full one. Given the structure of the department site, I am not sure that there is any great advantage to be gained. /paste I'm not sure I fully understand his concerns, and wondered if someone could enlighten me as to why he is reluctant to do this, why it would be A Bad Thing when it seems pretty innocuous to me. Or perhaps I should just get over it, use *.htm everywhere, and move on to more important issues. .. ? lib. *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Content negotiated links: why so bad?
I appreciate your comments, Breton, thank you. At 11:19 AM 1/03/2007 +1100, Breton Slivka wrote: Given the structure of the department site, I am not sure that there is any great advantage to be gained.' what special qualities of the site's structure is he talking about here? No special qualities. It's very simple. /dept/ contains all *.htm files including the site index, with css/javascript/images/otherstuff in their own /dirs/. Pretty basic. Maybe that's his point: little advantage. is seamless multiple language support, and seamless multiple browser support into the future important to the company? Are clean, easy to remember URL's important? Nope, to easy URLs (forgive me, I don't understand the relationship between MultiViews and language/browser support). The webmaster I'm talking to is responsible for URLs that end like this *.cfm?doc_id=n ... and thinks it's perfectly acceptable (just one of the many many reasons I'm glad our dept's website is NOT in the organisation's CMS). In fact, I think he quite likes them, and certainly doesn't seem to think usable URLs are an issue in any way at all. what percentage of your target audience would be able to take real advantage of this change? Probably a very small one. However, the last usability study I did on my site (the webmaster hasn't done one of those, has he, nah, course not), a couple of users actually mentioned how they preferred my dept's style of URL to the organisation's. I was just trying to make it even better. I think /dept/training/ just looks way cooler and more professional than /dept/training.htm Perhaps I'll just let this one go; there are sure to be bigger issues down the track more worth my time. *sigh* thanks again though, i really did want to understand more about his response. lib. *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
