On 2 Jul 98, Bruce Young wrote:
> "Home page to fit on one screen! Current thinking recommends this."
>
> Thoughts, rude or otherwise, are welcome on that last quote.
While I believe it is certainly preferable where practical to have all the major links
on an initial page visible in a single screen, there are some caveats.
For instance, apart from the obvious rejoinder of "whose screen at what
resolution?", there is the danger of cramming too much information into too small a
space, overwhelming the user with choices (and/or sacrificing legibility by use of
overly small fonts, etc.) I find this a problem with some of the portal sites I visit
nowadays.
Jakob Nielsen, who I'm sure we'll all agree is a guru of usability, had this to say on
the subject in his December '97 Alertbox:
* * *
'Scrolling Now Allowed'
In early studies [1994-95], I found that only 10% of Web users would scroll a
navigation page to see any links that were not visible in the initial display. The
vast
majority of users would make their selection from those links they could see without
scrolling. In retrospect, I believe this was due to people treating a set of Web
options like they would treat a dialog box: You always design dialog boxes so that
all choices are visible...
In more recent studies, we have seen that most users have started scrolling when
they visit a long home page or a long navigation screen. This change in behavior is
probably due to users getting more experience with scrolling Web pages.
There are still a few users who rarely scroll. Those users who are willing to scroll
may be tempted to chose one of the initially visible options when it seems to match
their goals. Such users will never see an even better, but invisible, choice that
would have required scrolling. Therefore, I still recommend trying to design
navigation pages to make all major choices visible without scrolling on the monitors
used by the average visitor to a site. Also, the likelihood of making the best choice
from a navigation page is maximized if the user can see and compare all the options
at the same time without having to scroll and remember the hidden choices.
The change from 1994 is that scrolling is no longer a usability disaster for
navigation pages. Scrolling still reduces usability, but all design involves
trade-offs,
and the argument against scrolling is no longer as strong as it used to be. Thus,
pages that can be markedly improved with a scrolling design may be made as long
as necessary, though it should be a rare exception to go beyond three screenfulls
on an average monitor.
* * *
Complete article:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9712a.html
-----------
Brent Eades, Almonte, Ontario
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Town of Almonte: http://www.almonte.com/
Business Web site: http://www.almonte.com/brent/
____________________________________________________________________
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Join The Web Consultants Association : Register on our web site Now
Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants
If you lose the instructions All subscription/unsubscribing can be done
directly from our website for all our lists.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
