Re:RE: The humbling reality of writing multi-page articles

["Anameier, Christine A - Eagan, MN" <CANAMEIE -at- email -dot- usps -dot- gov>]

> . . . . in some usability book somewhere I
> read that it was good practice not to permit people to scroll
> more than a couple of "screens" past their position at the
> top of the page. I'm not sure what the logic for this was, or
> whether this has changed now that the average user is a lot
> more scroll-savvy, but that's what the decision was based on.

IIRC, the no-scrolling rule was one of Jakob Nielsen's early proclamations. He
did modify his stance after a couple of years; see "Changes in Web Usability
since 1994" at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9712a.html (in particular, the
section "Scrolling Now Allowed"). By 1997 he was saying that web users had
gotten more savvy and most of them could handle longer pages.

I still try to avoid putting home-page navigation elements "below the fold," but
that's a different critter.

It might be an interesting experiment to add a single-page/print version link
for your multi-page article, and then see how many people use it.

Christine


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