I would be interested to know how people think it is best to structure
what is currently a very long page of text. I have the diary of our
house build on our web site, and plan to divide it into sections with
a Table of Contents at the beginning linking to each section. Now -
do you think it would be better to leave it as one very long page with
different section headings to divide it up (and an occasional "Go to
Table of Contents" link) or to still use the Table of Contents idea
but put each section onto a separate page? There will eventually be
linked images as well, but I'm mainly interested at present in the
ease of use of one style versus another.

The url isn't relevant in this case but for those who are dying to
read about drains <g> it is:
<http://www.stonybrook-ludlow.co.uk/house.html>

My own thoughts are that possibly one long page is easier to navigate
rather than going from page to page - but against that, one long page
would take longer to download, especially if the reader is only
interested in one aspect.


--
Sally in Shropshire, UK
bed and breakfast near Ludlow: http://www.stonybrook-ludlow.co.uk
Reply To address is spam trap

In article <418cd3b1.10719154@news.individual.net>,
sallynewsgroup@yahoo.co.uk, a.k.a Sally Thompson says...


yee gads ... i've gone blind!

OK, what about some sort of timeline? It would certainly break the page
up, make it a touch more interesting, and not expect the viewer to
scroll thru all that text?


That's my contri ... :-/

On Sat, 6 Nov 2004 14:03:09 -0000, Tx2 <tx2newscollection@hotmail.com>
wrote:

Well, I don't expect them to scroll through all the text - I had to
get the text on there in a hurry for another reason and it's in a
transitional phase at the mo! Yes, a timeline is one way of doing it
- or, as I said, different sections (eg foundations, brickwork, oak
frame, etc, etc). But do you think it's best to break the page up
like that or put the different sections (whether under subject or time
or whatever) on different pages?


--
Sally in Shropshire, UK
bed and breakfast near Ludlow: http://www.stonybrook-ludlow.co.uk
Reply To address is spam trap

In article <418ce7ed.15900192@news.individual.net>,
sallynewsgroup@yahoo.co.uk, a.k.a Sally Thompson says...


you do at present ... ;-)

Fairy nuff ...

Personally, i'd do a timeline that opened up on a different page for
each section, somehow.

How you'd achieve that from a design perspective, i don't know.

This is a dreadful example, but one you might build on?
http://www.heritage-online.net/Timeline/frcont01.htm

I did a search for "archaeological timeline" on Google as i thought it's
bound to throw up a few timelines of the variety you might find useful!

Good luck.

"Sally Thompson" <sallynewsgroup@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:418cd3b1.10719154@news.individual.net...
<snip>
I agree with Tx2's comments, a time line of some description with either on
page links to the text or (IMO) a separate page for each time line
selection, but what ever, you do need to some how break the text up even if
it's with some <HR> lines !...

I would also suggest a different choice of default font, "Comic Sans" and
"Trebuchet" are not the easiest on the eyes.

On Sat, 6 Nov 2004 15:26:48 -0000, Tx2 <tx2newscollection@hotmail.com>
wrote:

Thanks for the input. Have looked at the example, which was built in
<hiss>FrontPage</hiss>! but I see what you mean, and it gives me some
food for thought. I like the concept and will see what I can do.
Thanks for your time.


--
Sally in Shropshire, UK
bed and breakfast near Ludlow: http://www.stonybrook-ludlow.co.uk
Reply To address is spam trap

On Sat, 6 Nov 2004 16:35:13 -0000, ":::Jerry::::" <me@privacy.net>
wrote:

Thanks for that Jerry. I do admit that I need to break up the text,
hence the question <bg>. I do like the idea of the time line, which I
hadn't thought of before, and I can see from the example he gave that
it did open into separate pages. Off to work I go!

I hadn't realised that my default font wasn't easy on the eyes. I
suppose I'm used to it, and I thought it looked nice and informal.
Okay, I'll ponder on that a bit. Thanks very much again for your
input.

--
Sally in Shropshire, UK
bed and breakfast near Ludlow: http://www.stonybrook-ludlow.co.uk
Reply To address is spam trap

On Sat, 06 Nov 2004 13:39:35 GMT, sallynewsgroup@yahoo.co.uk (Sally
Thompson) wrote in <418cd3b1.10719154@news.individual.net>:

Why not both? I find that even for the same information, I sometimes one
one long page, sometimes a set of linked pages.

The trick is to generate both forms from a common input so that you
don't have to do everything twice. At the same time, you generate the
table of contents from the content, so you don't have to maintain that
by hand.

There are various ways to do that, but why not have a go with XML and
XSLT.

--
Owen Rees - opinions expressed here are mine; for a full disclaimer
visit <http://homepages.tesco.net/~owen.rees/index.html#disclaimer>
for e-mail use "owen.rees at tesco.net" instead of the From address

On Sun, 07 Nov 2004 20:54:11 +0000, Owen Rees <orees@hotmail.com>
wrote:

Owen - you've given me more food for thought. Since I don't know XML
and XSLT (but am willing to learn most things!) this would be for the
long term - so I'll keep this note on my "to do" list for present.
Thanks!

--
Sally in Shropshire, UK
bed and breakfast near Ludlow: http://www.stonybrook-ludlow.co.uk
Reply To address is spam trap

<uk.net.web.authoring , Sally Thompson , sallynewsgroup@yahoo.co.uk>
<418f959e.29571232@news.individual.net>
<Mon, 08 Nov 2004 15:51:55 GMT>

Instead of learning a new language - perhaps learning some web design
skills would be better for you .

While your website does the job fine - at the moment it looks quite
amateur because of the yellow background colour and the large nav boxes
you have .

A creamy white background and more normal sized nav buttons would
improve it quite quickly without doing a lot of work .

A more square on photo with no cars blocking the view of the building
would be good & theres no need for it to say stoneybrook on the image as
the website text already tells the punter that .

Assuming you wanted to keep the photo about the same size - you could
give it a sort of letterbox look and perhaps have it the same width as
the new thinner nav buttons .