Re: FWIW--Hypertext

[Laurie Rubin <lmr -at- SYL -dot- NJ -dot- NEC -dot- COM>]

I agree that some of the WWW docs use more links than required for the
amount of supplied information.  I am sure it has to do with how the info. is
stored -- multiple files as opposed to one large file -- or they are using
node paragraph styles more often than they need to.
In some cases the multiple files may be useful for specific info., while
this may not be so in other instances.

For example, I was looking for a list of schools, and one URL broke
their list down by state. In my case, I wanted to print the entire list. To do
this, I spent more than two hours opening the link for each state and printing
out each page with one to three school listings!  I am assuming the links were
to separate files, because I had to wait for each file to be downloaded!

If the links were within the same document,  I could have printed the entire
list just one time, and if I wanted to, I could quickly jump to a specific
location within the document.

Laurie

>      Just saw this and thought it interesting. Anyone seen
>      the full article? Anything else good? Who is Howard
>      Strauss?
>      Eric
>      ejray -at- okway -dot- okstate -dot- edu


>      HYPERTEXT BOWLS OF SPAGHETTI
>      Howard Strauss of Princeton University thinks WWW
>      content designers need to relearn some old lessons of
>      scholarship:  "In the past we learned how to
>      use footnotes, tables of contents, and indexes
>      effectively, but in our electronic formats we seem to
>      have forgotten all that.  We use too many
>      hypertext links, use them where they make no sense,
>      ignore the difference between footnotes and tables of
>      contents, build links to bizarre and unexpected places,
>      ignore standard ways of linking, and confuse, rather
>      than enlighten, with hypertext structures that make
>      bowls of spaghetti seem like models of good
>      organization."  (Edutech Report, May'95, p.1)