Peter's question about Java navigation has shaken loose a rant that's
been locked up inside me for quite a while, so if everyone will pardon
me, i'm going to vent some steam. Peter, this has nothing to do with
you specifically, you just happened to be there for the triggering
event. there was also a reference somewhere in the thread about screen
stats to the effect of "thank God we're getting away from 8-bit color
and into 16-bit", and that's the kind of thing simply /designed/ to go
straight up my luddite nose.
one of the things that really puts my knickers in a twist and knots them
around my head, though, is the seemingly endless fascination page
designers have for finding new and exciting ways to move from page to
page. HTML already contains, as part of its fundamental definition, a
piece of markup which takes users from one page to another.. it's
called:
* * * * * * * *
* * * * ** * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * *
* * ***** * * * * ** ** * ***** *
***** * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * *
* * ***** * * * * * *
you may have heard of them..
it's not that i think grey pages of nothing but text are the acme of
online presentation.. well, okay, i *do*.. but i'm willing to accept the
idea that some sites can benefit from a stronger emphasis on
ornamentation. heck, even i'll get a wild hair sometimes, and set the
background color of a page to white.
that being the case, i recognize the use of image links as a convenient
way to organize navigational elements on a page.. and that's a big
concession IMHO, because it implies several fundamental things about the
interface. if images are to be used as links, they need to support the
same feedback operations as text links.
the thing that chips little flakes off my bum is the fact that none of
the standard rollovers do that. text links.. those plain old, boring,
"so simple they have to be replaced" page features.. support a
surprisingly intricate set of behaviors, if you take a serious look at
them.
stop and think about the highlighing on a text link for a minute.. it
changes color to let you know that you have, in fact, clicked in the
right spot to activate the link. it's the visual equivalent of the
'click' of the mouse button or the little 'pop' you feel when pressing a
key on a decent keyboard.
now take a look at the average linked image with a javascript rollover..
it doesn't wait for the user to click, it rolls over as soon as the
mouse is within the active frame of the image. the meaning of the
highlight has been redefined from "you have triggered an action" to "the
cursor is over this image".
one word: duh.
for those of you who do choose to use rollovers to highlight an image,
please stick to the same conventions as are used for text links. have
the rollover happen when the user presses down on the mouse button, and
the actual page transition happen when the user *releases* the button.
if you do the transition when the button goes down, you short-circuit
the popup menus which allow users to do things like bookmark the link or
open a new browser window.
also remember to include an operation for onBlur() which reverses the
highlighting, and takes the image back to its default state. that will
allow a user to highlight the image when they click down on it, then
change their mind and slide the cursor off the image without actually
going to the new page.
of course, one of the most useful features of text links, which
rollovers don't even touch, is that they display the user's click
history. it's not the kind of thing you pay attention to, normally,
but the ability to glance at a page and see which links have been
followed is something that users find tremendously reassuring. dimmed
links are the digital equivalent of chalk marks on the cave walls, which
keep you from getting lost. they allow you to spot dead ends without
having to follow them again, and they provide a back-trail to help you
remember where you've been.
if it were possible to specify 'normal', 'active', and 'viewed' images
to be used as navigation links, i'd be completely happy letting people
replace the default linking systems with their own. HTML doesn't
support that kind of thing, though, and to fake it, you have to get into
some very intrusive voodoo involving browser parameters and cookies.
another thing which thoroughly ticks me off is the use of selections as
popup menus for navigation. the desirability of this concept just
doesn't fit in my head.. and i *know* the traditional justification for
them: supposedly, they're a way to save space when you don't have
enough room on the page for a full listing of links.
not enough excuse-me-*what*? this is the kerflippin' WEB! the amount
of available screen space is a multiple of screen pitch, modem speed,
and mean clicks before failure of the mouse button.
"ah," designers say, "but we don't want to make the users load a whole
new page just to see the list of links."
right..
let's stop and think about this for a second..
to save the user from having to click on something which will show them
a list of available options, you make them click on something which will
show them a list of available options.
do ya see where i'm coming from?
something #1 is fundamental to the definition of HTML, requires no
additional jiggering to work, and has the added benefit of putting all
your information in a central location.. change it once and you're done;
no need to worry about synchronization issues.
something #2 is certainly part of HTML, but there's a whole swath of the
DTD devoted to setting up the background pieces which make it work. in
deployment, it requires either a CGI call or (don't-let-me-catch-you-
using-this-for-your-core-navigation-if-i've-got-my-cattle-prod-and-
stompin'-boots-handy-and-please-compare-the-'efficiency'-of-this-to-
simply-linking-off-to-another-bloody-page) Javascript to make the actual
transition. furthermore, it's a distributed element, which implies
synchronization issues, and is especially difficult to debug because the
contents aren't automatically visible when the page is displayed in the
browser window.
this doesn't strike me as the kind of judgement call which involves
serious wear and tear on the neurons.
the extrapolation of my opinions regarding Java-applet heirarchical
menus is left as an exercise for the reader.
the voice of public opinion as overwhelmingly declared that users don't
give a wet slap about flash in most cases, and the developer community
is starting to do a good job of carrying that message to its clients.
we're still seeing after-effects of the flash feeding frenzy, though.
we've become accustomed to seeing proprietary data formats which support
some new kind of streaming, require a 12 meg browser plug-in to operate,
and actually deliver their entire feature set on exactly three machines
in the entire world. it's made us forget the days when inline JPEG
rendering and blinking text were bleeding edge technologies, and anyone
who put 150K of graphics in a page was just *way* too impressed with
their mastery of Photoshop 2.5.
yes, the bandwidth has improved, and the standard browsers support
enough bloatware that you can pare away 90% of the cruft and still have
a perfectly adequate display system. there's also a whole lot more
built into the basic fabric of HTML itself, much of which represents an
uneasy detente among the unfriendly variants of bloatware. the core
concept of hypertext hasn't changed much at all, though. the back to
basics movement is great, but it's also good to refresh one's memory of
just how *basic* basic can be.
mike stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 'net geek..
been there, done that, have network, will travel.
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