Re[10]: Project X

[Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- COM]

      Gotta disagree with you here, Arlen. I would rather see the URL.
      Of course, I generally dislike imagemaps.

I know most of the internal customers here don't care about the URL's (only
have the one imagemap in my whole site, so that's not a big factor) or could
even *find* the URL on the screen if given three guesses. About 1 in 3 even
have the line turned off that displays the URL being pointed to. (Numbers
approximate, arrived at from watching users use my site. That's the
advantage of an internal web site, you can take a walk and watch your
customers fumble around on your pages to see where you goofed. It's a
humbling exercise that I heartily recommend. Results aren't a systematic
study, but they're reliable.)

I wonder, Tracy. Does the URL preference break along expertise lines? (Power
User love URL! <grunt, grunt, grunt>) The majority of my internal audience
aren't big Internet users.

As for me, I don't have a solid preference for the URL or not. It depends on
what I'm doing. If I'm beachcombing for vendor information, I usually don't
care; just get me the information, and if the link is broken, fine -- I'll
proceed to the next vendor. (Oooh, ain't I hard-hearted?) On the other hand,
if I'm looking for help with a problem, I'll even try ftp-ing the page in
question. ;{>} So the urgency of the question controls whether I care about
what the URL is -- and then only if there's a problem. I usually don't read
the URL before taking the link. The only point to it is if there's a
problem. Which brings us back to design problems, in the area of site
management.


Have fun,
Arlen
Chief Managing Director In Charge, Department of Redundancy Department
DNRC 224

Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- Com
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In God we trust; all others must provide data.
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Opinions expressed are mine and mine alone.
If JCI had an opinion on this, they'd hire someone else to deliver it.

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