Mail Starting 7/30/98
16 messages, ending 9/29/98
Last modified: 6/17/98
This section is in chronological order, since it is being released as one piece.
Send your comments to:
From: Frances McKenzie
Date: 7/30/98
Subject: goodlinks.htm
Comment:
I see too many web pages these days with FONT SIZE=2. Unless I open the
frame into a new page, I can't enlarge the onscreen type enough to be able
to read it. My font preference is set to Verdana 10 in Netscape 4.04. It
displays way too small to read when people set absolute font sizes to 2 (I
believe 3=normal preference).
Anyway, your site may have some great material, but it's too painful to
read online and I don't have time to print it all out.
From: Mary Utt
Date: 8/3/98
Subject: screen fonts
Jeremy Dedic asked about screen font studies, something I dabbled in at
Digital circa 1986.
Alas, we didn't publish our results. However, I recently came across a
couple of articles:
1. "Reading Electronic Text"by Alfred T. Lee, published by Beta Research
Inc, PO Box 2713,
Cupertino, CA 95015-2713 (tel. 408-353-2665), December 1996.
2. "A Study of Fonts Designed for Screen Display" by Dan Boyarski, et
al., ACM CHI 98
Conference Proceedings, page 87.
Both studies recommend sans serif. In the studies at Digital, New
Century Schoolbook
(serif) did well in the usability studies and as a result we used it for
an online documentation
application. The ACM study used Times Roman as the serif font they
evaluated ("because
it is commonly used to display online text"). We found however that it
scored much less
well than NCS and if you think about the attributes of TR, I can't
imagine how it got to be
the online serif font of choice. It is a narrow, compressed font
designed for the narrow columns
of newspapers, to cram as much text onto the paper as possible (paper
being costly). It seems
to me that the screen has wildly different design constraints.
Anyway.
It also turns out that font size is crucial. On paper, text is typically
set in 10 pt. We found
that for screen readability, 12 pt was better. It all has to do with
resolution. as Dan notes: the best
screen resolution is not even close to good print resolution. (For this
reason, avoid italics, they are
way too jaggy on the screen.) Gould. et al., at IBM once did readability
studies using a souped
up terminal that came close to page resolution and screen readabilty
approached that of paper.
The Gould studies are cited in both the articles above.
Hope this helps.
Mary Utt
Thanks! Sorry posting this response took so long -- now that we've set up a newsgroup the questions/answers should go quicker.
-DanB
From: David Nicholls
Date: 8/5/98
Subject: A possible example of a "don't" on your pages...
Hi,
I've read with interest the Trellix pages and the gooddocuments pages.
There is one comment I'd make: you have two rather similar pages whose
functions are not really well separated:
http://www.gooddocuments.com/Techniques/techniqueshome.htm
and
http://www.gooddocuments.com/Techniques/overview.htm
They seem to serve much the same function. Indeed, the second of the
two also seems to break your rule of "summarise a point so the reader
doesn't need to jump there". I had much the same sort of problem whe I
was rebuilding part of my personal web site
(http://www.home.aone.net.au/byzantium/ferns/index.html ) If I'd known
about Trellix I would probably have used it there. (Can it be used on
pre-existing sites?)
My point is summarised by Antoine de Saint Exupery: "perfection is
achieved not when there is no more to add, but when there is no more to
take away". Or, in context, if two summary pages look like they
duplicate each other, they probably do, and you should remove one of
them.
Very useful information all over you site, despite that comment.
Regards
DN
Thanks for the comments. I agree with you on it, though the overview may not provide enough different information, it should have and may be more of a placeholder until I do some re-writing.
-DanB
From: David Nicholls
Date: 8/5/98
Subject: Link text colours on a complex site
Hello again.
Having progressed further through your gooddocuments site than when I
sent the previous message, I have a comment on the colour to use for
visited links versus unvisted links.
On a complex site such as yours, one usually explores from an index of
summary page. I used
http://www.gooddocuments.com/Techniques/techniqueshome.htm
On that page, the visited links are constrained to be the same colour as
the unvisited ones, meaning I can't tell from the colour whether I've
followed a link or not. On the lower level pages, the links change from
blue to black when visited.
I think it was Jacob Nielsen who said that one should use the default
(blue and purple) colours for unvisited and visited links, as people
have become familiar with them. I don't agree that the default colours
are necessary, but I do think that the colours should be different to
allow visitors to see what's been visted and what hasn't. Also, the
underline default of a link is important, and I think it's a very good
idea *not* to use underlines for emphasis only (ie leave them for
links). The newly emerging trend to use style sheets to allow one to
set links in a non-standard style I think is a bad idea. You have to
run your mouse all over the place to find a link, sometimes. Not good
design.
I have used non standard colours for links where I use a darker
background, or where there is a theme colour (eg green on my ferns
pages). I use a different shade, in most cases, to tell the user where
they've been.
For your consideration.
DN
Visited links with purple has been added to the site now that we've done the redesign in Trellix 2.0. Thanks for requesting it!
-DanB
From: Beedon, David E
Date: 8/10/98
Subject: Good information
Thanks for creating your web site. I just started reading the
information therein and I am impressed. Before reading "Write links that
don't have to be followed," I believed I understood that subject matter
adequately. Reading it showed me that I didn't, and that was humbling.
The examples of well-written links were valuable.
Thanks again---I'll be back to read more.
Dave Beedon
From: Beedon, David E
Date: 8/14/98
Subject: Attitude toward typos
I just read Sephen Barner's comment on typos (6/27/98). He makes a good
point. But I disagree with your response ("...that's what you've got to
tolerate when writing is your main concern and the extra effort and time
to have others check your work gets in the way of timeliness for an
Intranet...").
Does that mean that it's more important to publish shoddy work right
away than it is to take a little longer (half-hour per page, perhaps?)
to produce the best possible product? The overall quality of your site
tells me that the authors care about their material, so this typo
philosopy baffles me. Just how timely do your web pages need to be? Will
you lose readers if it takes a little longer to eliminate typos while
building a page? There's a saying that applies: "If you don't have time
to do it right the first time, when are you going to have time to fix
it?"
Your site is wonderful, and I'm grateful that it exists---and that there
is no advertising (Thank you, Trellix). That's why I bothered to send
this comment.
Thanks for being there.
From: Jim O'Neill
Date: 8/15/98
Subject: Redirection
Here's another tip:
Don't use a redirection site that redirects so quickly that the Back button is useless.
My webmaster tells me that the redirection with no wait that you get on our main URL helps make many cases of IE find our URL more reliably. You can back up through it if you press the Back button a few times quickly in succession. (I don't like it either, but it cut down the complaints about getting to our page and the error rate substantially.)
-DanB
From: Dick Miller
Date: 8/18/98
Subject: Typo on "Use Lists" page
Just thought you'd like to know about a typo in the example on the "Use
Lists" page: the word "its" is misspelled as "it's."
--Dick Miller
Oops! It's now fixed. Its spelling should be correct.
-DanB
From: Beedon, David E
Date: 8/18/98
Subject: Typo
There is a typo on http://www.gooddocuments.com/Techniques/overview.htm
:
How to layout within pages
These techniques help you organize the text and links inside of a single
page. They include...
It should be:
How to lay out within pages
"Layout" = noun meaning "arrangement."
"Lay out" = verb meaning "to arrange."
Love your site; keep up the great work!
Fixed. Thank you!
-DanB
From: Kevin Crossman
Date: 8/20/98
Subject: Problem with some pages
http://www.gooddocuments.com/Techniques/typography.htm
I have my font size set to 10pt, on a WinNT machine with an 800x600
monitor. On the page above, bolding does not show up (in Arial font,
your choice) until the font size is 12 pt., losing MUCH of the impact of
your site. You may want to play with this to see how prevalent the
problem I am seeing is.
-Kevin
I believe that at the normal default (Netscape: 12pt, IE: Medium) font size 3 is 12pt, and the font we use for our body text, size 2, is around 10pt. It is only at size 1, around 7.5pt, that bolding doesn't show. By setting your default down to small, our body type goes down to smaller, which for some reason the browsers do not bold.
-DanB
From: John Kipling Lewis
Date: 9/1/98
Subject: You site.
You have many useful and interesting articles, however your text size
choice is not useful. An example would be:
http://www.gooddocuments.com/philosophy/philosophyhome.htm
Where you mention that skimming is important, but only put this text in
font size 1. May I suggest that you keep "readable" text in sizes 2
<standard size> and up and allow me (the user) to define what font size I
wish to use. It's my opinion that font sizes below 2 should be reserved
for text which isn't of interested to all readers, like legal notices and
copyrights.
John Lewis
As I mentioned above, and others have pointed out, we set all our body type to size=2. We mainly use the smaller type for navigation in the sidebars.
-DanB
From: Joel Garry
Date: 9/8/98
Subject: Composition suggestion.
I suggest you use blue backgrounds with white text. All these white
background pages are burning out my eyeballs. Remember, we are looking at
photon emitting devices, not paper reflections. Green and yellow for links
stand out nicely.
jg
From: Jenny O'Grady
Date: 9/11/98
Subject: Thanks and suggestion
Thanks for the excellent ideas.
I have a suggestion - at the bottom of each page, could you link to the
following page please, instead of making us go back to the home page
before clicking on the consecutive page.
Jenny
In the new design you will see a next link in the left border on every page in sequences. The older design had a graphic. This should be more obvious.
-DanB
From: Ed Blachman
Date: 9/20/98
Subject: a small update for gooddocuments.com
In the Techniques page where you talk about when and how to use frames
effectively, I think you should talk about foot/sidenotes in particular,
with reference to the trellicized Starr report and Tim Bray's annotated
XML spec (http://www.xml.com/axml/testaxml.htm).
-- ed
The Starr Report has been added as a sample. Tim's spec is a wonderful example. Both have been added to the Frames discussion. Thanks!
-DanB
From: Dick Kriesel
Date: 9/23/98
Subject: feedback from readers?
What techniques do you advocate for soliciting and capturing feedback from the
people who read the documents?
I'd like to capture feedback from my employer's worldwide sales force on the
requirements and priorities for a new sales information system.
-- Dick Kriesel
Anybody have ideas? Post them to the newsgroup!
-DanB
From: Rossiquet, Christian
Date: 9/29/98
Subject: GoodDocuments
Hello,
I read your Web Site "GoodDocuments" with a lot of interest, as I try to work
on the subject (in fact my subject is "modular writing", but it's very close
to "intranet writing").
Your advices are always clear and often precious, they show a practical
experience which we haven't till now.
I wonder why you didn't mention the InfoMapping method ? Is it intentional ?
Maybe you think it's not related to your subject ?
I live in France, so I haven't the same choice you could have in USA, but
this method was the only serious and "commercial" one I found (with training,
consulting, etc) about the "good writing" subject.
Thanks
Christian Rossiquet
No slight intended. InfoMapping, as I understand it, can be valuable and can add specific ideas that relate here. As most people practice it, I thought it was more print oriented.
-DanB