On 7/10/04 4:15 AM, Ryan Nichols wrote:
Here, I'll bring in the help of an expert. Excellent book, 'The Design of Sites' by Douglas Duyne, James Landay, and Jason Hong. Quote is from the section on Process Funnels.
I have this book, and as a formal collection of design patterns it's a fantastic resource. But, I don't rate it highly in terms of it's usability e.g. the TOC uses condensed light all caps which is really hard to scan. And, a cursory look before leaving for work this morning failed to turn up the term process funnel. My point is this: the book lacks usabilty, and by extension so will many of their suggestions. The last sentence you cite is good.
"not really helpful stuff like preventing me from overwriting a file in a save dialog. Also, with desktop applications you usually cannot proceed with a task until you have completed whatever subtask a dialog (pop-up) requires, which is not the case with pop-ups in a web browser." - Terrance
Ah.. Exactly, that's a situation which happens many many times in web applications. You are thinking of traditional pop-ups.
Exactly what situation happens many times in web applications? The nature, or behavior of pop-ups doesn't change because of their content. Can you be more specific about what a non-traditional pop-up is?
"But wait theres more? At what point in making a sale do you want to interrupt that process? If it's related, and important enough to the checkout process, then include it inline." - Terrence
Your forgetting, nothing you do inline will command as much attention as info displayed on top of the page content. It attracts our attention visually and will produce quicker and more accurate responses from users. Disturbing the page layout to show complex information will confuse the user and you risk them not even noticing the change.
I'm sure the invetor of the blink tag and marquee tag, and 1px killer design said the same... there are countless ways of focusing attention. And my question stands: what would you want to do that is more important than confirming an order? Clear labeling and familiar patterns produce quick and accurate results - nothing else.
The key is a process funnel. The user is attempting to accomplish a
clearly defined task. They want to accomplish it, they've 'signed up' to
accomplish it. THAT's where the pop-up window (DHTML or Browser) is
useful. Forcing them onto another page will lose sales and disorient the
user. Imagine filling out a complex form and you click on a link called
"need help?" and you are whisked away to an entirely different page deep
in the help section?
Ryan, I think you're missing the point. I've said "If the information is important to task completion include it inline". My sense of inline is not neccessarily a new page - it can come after the task oriented stuff placed at the top of the page. A new window usually *does* load a new page and this is why you assume additional information comes from a separate document.
User choice? The user doesn't know WHAT'S going to
happen before clicking, and in this case, disorientation shouldn't be a choice. Again, I have to say in a shopping cart scenario, you will lose sales when you remove people from a process funnel in the middle of the transaction. You and I know how to right-click and open in a tab...but most people do not. Also keep in mind in the same scenarios, it may not be a link.
see comments above... and again how is a popup window not removing a person from the task at hand?.
You might want to show a window with a critical error alert,
something that must be dealt with by the user before continuing. Pop-up
windows command more attention than anything you can do on the page
itself. (Think warning dialog boxes in windows)
As I stated earlier, and which you quote at the beginning of this email: Pop-up windows do not behave in the same way as warning dialogs.
Perhaps you are thinking of javascript alerts, which do provide this type of functionality.
I think we're all deeply scarred and mentally distraught from annoying pop-up ads...I know I am! But let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.
At any rate, back to semantics...I'd personally love to see the addition of link types for anchors in future versions.
link types already exist, it's called the rel attribute: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/links.html#edef-A
cheers Terrence. ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
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