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Re: More on this story... (Was: HTML heading styles)

for

From: Stephanie Sullivan
Date: Oct 20, 2004 12:44PM

On 10/20/04 11:59 AM, "darrel.austin" simply typed the following:

> I'm all for making it easy for end-users, but 'click here' is something that
> actually can hinder the usability of the site for a chunk of people, and,
> really, learning how to click a link is *the* fundamental principal of HTML
> and, as such, the web. Has anyone been in a user testing session where
> someone had no concept of clicking on links? I think the 'click here' phenom
> comes mainly from the client as they write content for the site offline as a
> way to explicitely show what text should be linked.

Honestly, there is a whole school of copywriting thought that says you must
spur people to "take action." It's not that people don't know how to click a
link... It's that they feel that by TELLING them to, the chances are greater
that they will actually do it.

I've read these copywriting tips... And I've tried to educate the woman that
does copy for me at times so that she can understand why this is not good
for usability and accessibility and so she can combine a more
active/descriptive link text with what she's already used to using... she's
doing better. :)

It's all in learning... And educating other people... And combining
techniques... It's a lot of work though, eh? Keeping up with it all from
every angle? :P

Stephanie Sullivan
Community MX Partner :: http://www.communitymx.com/author.cfm?cid=1008
Team Macromedia for Dreamweaver :: http://tinyurl.com/6huw3
Co-Author .: "Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 Magic" :. New Riders

We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within
themselves.