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Tracy Boyington wrote:
>
Usability tests by
> User Interface Engineering show that users are not only willing to
> scroll, but are also more likely to find useful information when they
> do.
I don't know about studies to that effect, but from my personal
experience I find a list of items to "click" on at the top of a page
misleading if those links don't actually take me to another page.
Imagine wanting to print one section of a long "document." You click on
it's link, wait for it to appear, then click your handydandy printer
icon. And what do you find when you go to get your 2-3 paragaphs from
the printer??? A stack of about 50 pages because those 2-3 paras were
in the midst of several thousand others all on one "page."
Now I click the link and watch the scroll bar to see whether or not it
stays at the top before I print. But wouldn't we all like our readers
to not have to learn that lesson the hard way?
BTW, I did run across one web site where they had the links at the top
but added the caveat that items could be reached by scrolling through.
Most readers would know from that that it was one long page, but an
outright statement to that effect would have been even better.
