Hello, Whilst many usability folk warn of user resistance to scrolling for information, there is some research that indicates that people will stick with long pages if the information is relevant and laid out in a manner that is least tiring on the eye (good contrast, thoughtful line length, no forced justification etc).
>From there you have two courses of action depending on the structure of the >document: i) If the document can be logically broken into smaller chunks, such as chapters, an executive summary and a table of contents might work, ii) If there are no logical breaks, keep the single, long screen and offer a hard copy format - either a print css (so you're only maintaining one set of information), or an alternative file format such as Type A pdf or rtf. Whilst not environmentally friendly, it offers an alternative to people who may find long on-screen articles difficult to absorb. Hope that gives you some ideas to think about. Kind Regards, Peter Hislop -----Original Message----- From: li...@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:li...@webstandardsgroup.org] On Behalf Of Al Sparber Sent: Sunday, 17 October 2010 12:49 PM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] Long documents > On 10/16/10 6:19 PM, grant_malcolm_bai...@westnet.com.au wrote: >> Hello, >> >> Is there any standard (official or otherwise) that limits the length >> of single web pages? >> >> I edit an online journal which contains articles of up to 7000 words. >> Currently each article resides on a single web page which the viewer >> must scroll to read. Some of the articles are 10-20 'screens' in length. >> >> If anyone could clarify whether there is a standard and, if so, how >> such documents should be presented, I would be grateful. If you want >> to look at the journal I'm talking about see www.baileyandireland.com. I wouldn't change a thing. You could split the articles into x-number of pages with page links at the bottom, but text loads very quickly and unless you limit a page to a single paragraph or two, people are invariably going to need to scroll so you may as well have the entire article on the page. Makes printing easy, too. -- Al Sparber - PVII http://www.projectseven.com Dreamweaver Menus | Galleries | Widgets http://www.projectseven.com/go/hgm The Ultimate Web 2.0 Carousel ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ******************************************************************* ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *******************************************************************
