[I've added the main Boost list to this response so the MPL guys can see it.] On 3/16/06 5:46 AM, "Joel de Guzman" <joel@boost-consulting.com> wrote:
In the link I presented a while ago (http://snipurl.com/no8s), you might have noticed that the headings are clickable. Headings now link to itself. Again, this is borrowed from the MPL docs. This allows you to right click and copy the URL, for example (especially useful in deeply nested sections). You know where you are, anywhere.
[That URL is <http://spirit.sourceforge.net/dl_docs/quickbook_doc/quickbook/doc/html/quic kbook/intro.html>, BTW. Check out the first word "Introduction" right before the quote for the link Joel is talking about.] I've read on some web design website that this is horrible UI. This is a feature that may be "kewl" for very advanced users, but it's obscure for above-average users, and detrimental to anyone else. 1. This word is an out-link without looking like an out-link. We shouldn't be presenting data like Easter egg hunts. You could counter by saying that the disguise is a good thing to dissuade newbies, but then how could oldbies discover it without looking at the source, scrubbing the page, or reading this e-mail? (It's a variant of guideline #3 at <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20031110.html>.) 2. Out-links to the same page is confusing to newbies. They'll think "my link click failed," not "it's a mnemonic for my browser's 'copy URL link' contextual-menu function." (It's based on guideline #10 from the web page I mentioned in [1].) 3. You implemented it as: <a name="quickbook.intro"></a><a href="intro.html" title="Introduction">Introduction</a> As I said before, using an empty "<a name>" as an in-link is a bad idea. You need to associate the link with something. AFAIK, nothing prevents an anchor from being an in- and out-link simultaneously: <a href="intro.html" name="quickbook.intro" title="Introduction">Introduction</a> If you don't care about anything before HTML-4, you can use the "id" attribute to mark destinations. (That's why it shares the same namespace as the "name" attribute.) <h2 id="quickbook.intro">Introduction</h2> So my final advice is to remove this mis-feature, and have the MPL docs purge it too. -- Daryle Walker Mac, Internet, and Video Game Junkie darylew AT hotmail DOT com