TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Bryan Westbrook wonders: <<What about borders around graphics that are links
on HTML pages? Do most readers know how to identify a graphic that is a
potential link or pass their pointer over them all just to see? Is this an
unreasonable expectation? Are most links duplicated in the text somewhere
anyway (I usually use a linked caption below mine)?>>
Interesting question. In my experience, most Web sites still use an
inconsistent mixture of graphics for links and graphics for eye candy, and I
often have to scan the page with my cursor to find out which is which.
Really bad design, particularly on a few sites where the only way to get to
some pages was via the graphics. I'm not sure whether there's a good
solution for graphics-only links, but I like your hybrid "graphic plus
caption" approach very much; among other things, it makes explicit what the
notion of tagging graphics via "alt" tags leaves implicit (and thus, easy to
forget): it provides alternative means of access for those who use
screenreaders or who don't know that graphics can also serve as links. I
particularly like redundant means of access, since you double the chance
that the reader will find what they're looking for.
As I noted with text links, I find it an unreasonable imposition on the
reader to ask them to hunt for links: links should be overt. I haven't
considered the notion of bordering graphics (the equivalent to underlining
text), but it makes sense to me that if your links do specifically look like
pushable buttons, this would achieve much the same effect. Now that software
such as Fireworks makes it so easy to create 3D buttons (I mean visually,
not using pushbutton animation effects), it seems to me that using 3D
buttons vs. "flat" graphics might make for a very elegant visual distinction
between functional (3D) and purely decorative (flat) images. Even without
using 3D, it might be possible to achieve a similar effect via layering
(e.g., graphics that stand alone are links, whereas graphics that underlie
text like watermarks are pure ornamentation).
--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
"User's advocate" online monthly at
www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/usersadvocate.html
"The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is
by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause
accidents."-- Nathaniel Borenstein
*** Deva(tm) Tools for Dreamweaver and Deva(tm) Search ***
Build Contents, Indexes, and Search for Web Sites and Help Systems
Available 4/30/01 at http://www.devahelp.com or info -at- devahelp -dot- com
Sponsored by DigiPub Solutions Corp, producers of PDF 2001
Conference East, June 4-5, Baltimore/Washington D.C. area. http://www.pdfconference.com or toll-free 877/278-2131.
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
