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Re: multiple file formats

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From: Korpela Jukka
Date: Jun 6, 2010 2:48AM

Cheryl Amato wrote:

> I'm just wondering what's the thinking on presenting the same file in
> multiple file formats. In particular, how would you word the link text?
> Would a properly coded data table be the best solution?

Naming the links in an accessibly way would be mission impossible. The
usual way is to use file format names as link texts, causing links with
identical names point to different resources. This is surely a no-no.
Adding some technical jargon to the names, like file size, would hardly
help much and would create problems of its own (and can well create
identical texts by accident).

It's not a matter of using table, it's a matter of putting links to many
resources in different formats on a single page. The number of links
becomes large and their names cannot be descriptive without being
unacceptably long.

So I would suggest setting up a page with links to the resources
generically, without file format issues. Each of the link would point to a
small page about that resource, and on that page, you can well have link
texts like "plain text", "Word format", or "PDF format", as they would be
the _only_ links (except general navigation links).

So the idea is to select the resource first, then the format. A rare case
where this might not be feasible is a situation where not all resources
are available in all formats and the user may wish to take this into
account when selecting the resource - i.e., it would not be a simple
matter of a two-phase selection, but the availability of formats could
affect the choice of resource. Then you might wish to set up two "front
pages" for the material, one by resource and one by format.

Yucca