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6.4 Creating Effective Links
A document becomes hypertext when
you toss in a few links in the same way that water becomes soup when
you throw in a few vegetables. Technically, you've
met the goal, but the outcome may not be very palatable.
Inserting anchors into your documents is something of an art,
requiring good writing skills, HTML/XHTML prowess, and an
architectural sense of your documents and their relationships to
others on the Web. Effective links flow seamlessly into a document,
quietly supplying additional browsing opportunities to the reader
without disturbing the current document. Poorly designed links scream
out, interrupt the flow of the source document, and generally annoy
the reader.
While there are as many linking styles as there are authors, here are
a few of the more popular ways to link your documents. All do two
things: they give the reader quick access to related information, and
they tell the reader how the link is related to the current contents.
6.4.1 Lists of Links
Perhaps the most common way to
present hyperlinks is in ordered or unordered lists in the style of a
table of contents or list of resources.
Two schools of style exist. One puts the entire list item into the
source anchor; the other abbreviates the item and puts a shorthand
phrase in the source anchor. In the former, make sure you keep the
anchor content short and sweet; in the latter, use a direct writing
style that makes it easy to embed the link.
If your list of links becomes overly long, consider organizing it
into several sublists grouped by topic. Readers can then scan the
topics (set off, perhaps, as <h3> headers)
for the appropriate list and then scan that list for the desired
document.
The alternative list style is much more descriptive, but also more
wordy, so you have to be careful that it doesn't end
up cluttered:
<p>
Kumquat-related documents include:
<ul>
<li>A concise guide to <a href=">
profitable kumquat farming</a>,
including a variety of business plans, lists of fruit
packing companies, and farming supply companies.
<li>101 different ways to <a href=">
use a kumquat</a>, including stewed kumquats and kumquat pie!
<li>The kumquat is a hardy tree, but even the greenest of
thumbs can use a few <a href=">
growing tips</a> to increase
their yield.
<li>The business of kumquats is an expanding one, as
shown by this 10 year overview of the
<a href="http://www.oreilly.com/kumquat_report/">
kumquat industry</a>.
</ul>
It sometimes gets hard to read a source HTML document, and it will
become even more tedious with XHTML. Imagine the clutter if
we'd used anchors with fragment identifiers for each
of the subtopics in the list-item explanations. Nonetheless, it all
looks pristine and easily navigable when displayed by a browser such
as Internet Explorer, as shown in Figure 6-4.
Figure 6-4. Wordy but effectively descriptive link list
This more descriptive style of presenting a link list tries hard to
draw readers into the linked document by giving a fuller taste of
what they can expect to find. Because each list element is longer and
requires more scanning by the reader, you should use this style
sparingly and dramatically limit the number of links.
Use the brief list style when presenting large numbers of links to a
well-informed audience. The second, more descriptive style is better
suited to a smaller number of links for which your readership is less
well-versed in the topic at hand.
6.4.2 Inline References
If
you aren't collecting links into lists,
you're probably sprinkling them throughout your
document. So-called inline links are more in
keeping with the true spirit of hypertext, since they enable readers
to mark their current place in the document, visit the related topic
in more depth or find a better explanation, and then come back to the
original and continue reading. That's very
personalized information processing.
The biggest mistake made by novice authors, however, is to overload
their documents with links and treat them as if they are panic
buttons demanding to be pressed. You may have seen this style of
linking; HTML pages with the word
"here" all over the place, like the
panic-ridden example in Figure 6-5 (we
can't bring ourselves to show you the source for
this travesty).
Figure 6-5. Links should not wave and yell, like first-graders, "Here! Me! Me!"
As links, phrases like "click here"
and "also available" are
content-free and annoying. They make the person who is scanning the
page for an important link read all the surrounding text to actually
find the reference.
The better, more refined style for an inline link is to make every
one contain a noun or noun/verb phrase relating to the topic at hand.
Compare how kumquat farming and industry news references are treated
in Figure 6-6 to the "Here! Me!
Me!" example in Figure 6-5.
Figure 6-6. Kinder, gentler inline links work best
A quick scan of Figure 6-6 immediately yields
useful links to "kumquat farming
methods" and "kumquat
industry's past ten years." There
is no need to read the surrounding text to understand where the link
will take you. Indeed, the immediately surrounding content in our
example, as for most inline links, serves only as syntactic sugar in
support of the embedded links.
Embedding links into the general discourse of a document takes more
effort than creating link lists. You have to actually understand the
content of the current document as well as the target documents, be
able to express that relationship in just a few words, and then
intelligently incorporate that link at some key place in the source
document. Hopefully this key place is where you might expect the user
to be ready to interrupt her reading and ask a question or request
more information. To make matters even more difficult, particularly
for the traditional tech writer, this form of author-reader
conversation is most effective when presented in active voice (he,
she, or it does something to an object versus the object having
something done to it). The effort expended is worthwhile, resulting
in more informative, easily read documents. Remember,
you'll write the document once, but it will be read
thousands, if not millions, of times. Please your readers,
please.
6.4.3 Linking Dos and Don'ts
Here are some hints for creating links:
Keep the link content as concise as possible
Long links or huge inline graphic icons for links are visually
disruptive and potentially confusing.
Never place two links immediately adjacent to one another
Most browsers make it difficult to tell where one link stops and the
next link starts. Separate them with regular text or line breaks.
Be consistent
If you are using inline references, make all of your links inline
references. If you choose to use lists of links, stick to either the
short or long form; try not to mix styles in a single document.
Try reading your document with all the nonanchor text removed
If some links suddenly make no sense, rewrite them so that they stand
on their own. (Many people scan documents looking only for links; the
surrounding text becomes little more than a gray background to the
more visually compelling links.)
6.4.4 Using Images and Links
It has become fashionable to use images
and icons instead of words for link contents. For instance, instead
of the word "next," you might use
an icon of a little pointing hand. A link to the home page is not
complete without a picture of a little house. Links to searching
tools must now contain a picture of a magnifying glass, a question
mark, or binoculars. And all those flashing, GIF-animated little
advertisements!
Resist falling prey to the "Mount Everest
syndrome" of inserting images simply because you
can. Again, it's a matter of context. If you or your
document's readers can't tell at a
glance what relationship a link has with the current document,
you've failed. Use cute images for links sparingly,
consistently, and only in ways that help readers scan your document
for important information and leads. Also, be ever mindful that your
pages may be read by someone from nearly anywhere on Earth (perhaps
beyond, even) and that images do not translate consistently across
cultural boundaries. (Ever hear what the
"okay" hand sign common in the
United States means to a Japanese person?)
Creating consistent iconography for a collection of pages is a
daunting task that really should be done with the assistance of
someone formally schooled in visual design. Trust us, the kind of
mind that produces nifty code and writes XHTML well is rarely suited
to creating beautiful, compelling imagery. Find a good visual
designer; your pages and readers will benefit immeasurably.
