Re: My Viol Consort's Website

chris.ambidge@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote in
news:bb4763d2-6363-4186-8552-3cbce355ba23@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
:

[david and ciaran]
You have a "Home" link on each page, which is good. However, it
is at the bottom of the page, and some people might expect to
find it at the top of the page. I'd suggest leaving the row of
links at the bottom of the page where they are, but also
turning "The Teares of the Muses" title near the top of the
page into a link (use CSS to disable the blue text color and
underline for that particular link).

This raises a number of issues. I prefer to have navigation both
at top and bottom, but Margaret finds multiple paths to the same
location extremely annoying. We had a fight over this. However,
there's a major problem with the design, with the border at the
top leaving no place to put the top nav (I guess it could go in a
horizontal row above the top border, but that would be visually
jarring, seems to me).

Margaret needs to get over that dislike.

Well, yes, of course, but ultimately, she is responsible for the
content (you might note the meta copyright tag has her name in it),
and that gives here veto power over certain design decisions. That
is, it's no *my* website. If it were, it would be quite different.


Not everyone thinks the same
way, and forcing all the links to occur only once is requiring
everyone who reads the website to think along the same paths. A
webpage is NOT a book, where there is a single narrative thread
running from sentence to sentence. People assimilate information
from HTML-based pages, with mutiple links, along many different
paths. Your links need to reflect that different style of
learning.

I know this. I had to struggle mightily with convincing her of any
number of things that were not possible design-wise. She's very
print-oriented and has no understanding of web design. But she's the
boss, so I have to deal with it.

If a page is more than three screens long, you certainly need
links
top and bottom to other pages. Having to scroll up to the top of
the page to find the links can get downright annoying, and if
people have difficulty getting around your website, they'll get
bored or annoyed and will go do something else, which I assume is
NOT what you want to do to your audience.

Well, just so you know, until two weeks ago, the entirety of all the
content you see there was all on ONE PAGE (except for the photos). I
was the one who did the work to rewrite the content so it could be
broken down into multiple pages. So, it's progress, however slow it
may seem to an outsider.

This website, I assume, is about showing your consort to the
public, and to sell it - increase audiences. It should be easy to
navigate, so multiple links are the way to go. It is NOT, I
assume, about giving Margaret something that she likes, as if it
was a scrapbook on the shelf. If she likes it, that's a bonus,
but her approach to to reading (any) webpage is not the same as
the approach of others.

Well, to be honest, in all my experiences training people to use
computers, I've found that quite a large portion of computer users
find it frustrating to be given more than one method to accomplish a
task. These people are usually linear thinkers and like to follow a
set of instructions. This is a valid way of interacting with a
computer and it's silly to completely discount the needs of people
who may not be as familiar with web navigation as you are.

I am reminded of a recent discussion with one of my clients about
website design. She had pointed me to a discussion in the ILAB
newsletter () and the writer of the article pontificated on how
technology is affecting book dealers. He crowed about how wonderful
his website was. But this is his website:

http://www.betweenthecovers.com/btc

I look at that and want to run screaming from the room. WTF?

Likewise, I have a regular client who is a gentleman in his mid-70s
who has early stages of Alzheimer's. He is having me train him on
using the computer twice a week as a way to exercise his memory
"muscles." One of the things I notice when I'm working with him is
how incredibly difficult to understand most modern websites are. The
multiple columns with all sorts of different content are extremely
difficult to understand at a glance unless you're very accustomed to
these layouts. He wants to check out the Wall Street Journal online
(http://online.wsj.com/home-page), but when we first went there, I
had to spend a substantial amount of time working through with him
what was being presented visually. It's hideously complicated --
much moreso than the front page of any print newspaper -- and not
organized in a way that makes it clear what the editors consider
important.

So, I'm very sympathetic to the needs of those who are not
super-sophisticated like I am. And because of that, I definitely
sympathize with the "don't give me too many ways to get to the same
content" state of mind. I think it can be worked around, and I also
think that this horse is long out of the barn, as most people have
come to expect top and bottom navigation, but I respect Margaret's
expression of frustration over these things.

And, she's the boss.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
usenet at dfenton dot com http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/
.

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