E-mail List Archives

Search E-mail List Archives for

Number of posts in this thread: 10 (In chronological order)

From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Wed, Nov 10 2004 11:03AM
Subject: Listing URLs...link the URL text or just the title?
No previous message | Next message →

I think the answer to this is obvious, but that I'm just overthinking it.
;o)

What would people recommend be the best way to show a list of links to other
sites:

Site A
http://sitename.com
Description of Site A

Site B
http://sitename.com/this/is/a/longer/url
Description of Site B

Site C
http://sitename.com/heres/another/long/url/for/example.html
Description of Site C

My hunch is that explicitly writing out the URL as a text link would be a
pain to have to listen to while using a screen reader, plus, the link itself
doesn't really say what the page is. So, based on that, it'd make more sense
to just link the site names, rather than writing out a full URL and linking
that.

However, the geek in me sees some value in writing out the full URL as it
makes it easier to scan where the links are actually taking you, and makes
it much more convienient to have to print out.

Perhaps it'd be best to link the Site name and then show the full text link
only on a print CSS version?

Like I said, I think I'm overthinking this one...

-Darrel

From: Iain Harrison
Date: Wed, Nov 10 2004 11:12AM
Subject: Re: Listing URLs...link the URL text or just the title?
← Previous message | Next message →

Wednesday, November 10, 2004, 6:02:07 PM, darrel.austin wrote:

> Site C
> http://sitename.com/heres/another/long/url/for/example.html
> Description of Site C

> My hunch is that explicitly writing out the URL as a text link would be a
> pain to have to listen to while using a screen reader, plus, the link itself
> doesn't really say what the page is.

If I wanted to make the full URL visible, what I'd do is <a
href="http://sitename.com/heres/another/long/url/for/example.html"
title="http://sitename.com/heres/another/long/url/for/example.html">Example page at Sitename


--

Iain

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Wed, Nov 10 2004 11:37AM
Subject: Re: Listing URLs...link the URL text or just the title?
← Previous message | Next message →

iain wrote:
> If I wanted to make the full URL visible, what I'd do is <a
> href="http://sitename.com/heres/another/long/url/for/example.html"
>
title="http://sitename.com/heres/another/long/url/for/example.html">Example
page at Sitename

As, depending on verbosity settings in screenreaders, a user may
potentially only hear the title when present, i'd suggest duplicating
the actual link text in the title as well

<a href="http://sitename.com/heres/another/long/url/for/example.html"
title="Example page at Sitename -
http://sitename.com/heres/another/long/url/for/example.html">Example
page at Sitename

or similar.

Patrick H. Lauke
_____________________________________________________
re

From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Wed, Nov 10 2004 12:24PM
Subject: Re: Listing URLs...link the URL text or just the title?
← Previous message | Next message →

> If I wanted to make the full URL visible, what I'd do is <a
> href="http://sitename.com/heres/another/long/url/for/example.html"
>
title="http://sitename.com/heres/another/long/url/for/example.html">Example
> page at Sitename

Ah...see...I WAS overthinking it. ;o)

That'll work just fine.

Redux...do screen readers have an option so that one can also have the
actual link URL read out?

-Darrel

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Wed, Nov 10 2004 4:10PM
Subject: Re: Listing URLs...link the URL text or just the title?
← Previous message | Next message →

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004, darrel.austin wrote:

> What would people recommend be the best way to show a list of links to other
> sites:

From one perspective, the description should come first, then the link, so
that linearized presentation would work nicely. But this would probably
alienate too many people, so I would suggest the simple approach of using
the link as a heading (...) and the description
a normal paragraph, or sometimes other content, below it. Demo:
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/english.html

> My hunch is that explicitly writing out the URL as a text link would be a
> pain to have to listen to while using a screen reader,

Indeed. It gets rather dull, as we can guess simply by reading a URL
aloud. Some URL, especially some server technologies like nominally
database-driven systems, can be really awkward, with a very long "random"
string of characters.

> plus, the link itself
> doesn't really say what the page is.

Indeed. Sometimes a URL is descriptive, but it need not be, and it cannot
be very descriptive, partly due to character repertoire limitations.

> So, based on that, it'd make more sense
> to just link the site names, rather than writing out a full URL and linking
> that.

Exactly. Or page names. Or sometimes with a short name as the link text
and a long name or description in the title attribute for the link.

> However, the geek in me sees some value in writing out the full URL as it
> makes it easier to scan where the links are actually taking you, and makes
> it much more convienient to have to print out.

On normal browsers, the status line shows the URL, unless the author
messes it up wtih JavaScript nuisances, and on other browsers, there's
some other way of accessing the URL string if needed.

> Perhaps it'd be best to link the Site name and then show the full text link
> only on a print CSS version?

That's a bit questionable too, though I have sometimes used such an
approach when a document is designed to work online and also get printed
and copied. But normally the URL of the page itself is sufficient; the
user needs to type it only and then access all the links there, without
even needing to see the URLs unless he wants to.

What I have done in some cases is that I put the URL, delimited by the
"" delimiters for clarity, into the normal content of the page
but enclosed into a element which a class, with @media print
rule display: none for that class. Some caution is needed, but it seems to
work tolerably - _except_ that when CSS is off, the user needs to see or
listen to the URLs.

The more clever approach is to use generated content in CSS, so that the
URL to be printed is generated from the attribute value and not written
into the document content proper. But this does not work on IE, so it's
mainly an option if you just want to create printed versions on advanced
browsers.

(I'm pretty sure some old version(s) of IE had the option of printing a
table of links at the end of a printed copy, via the print settings.
I wonder what happened to it.)

--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Wed, Nov 10 2004 4:19PM
Subject: Re: Listing URLs...link the URL text or just the title?
← Previous message | Next message →

jkorpela wrote:
> I would suggest the simple approach of using
> the link as a heading (...) and the description
> a normal paragraph, or sometimes other content, below it.
You could also use definition lists, with the link as DT and the
description as DD

Patrick H. Lauke
_____________________________________________________
re

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Wed, Nov 10 2004 4:26PM
Subject: Re: Listing URLs...link the URL text or just the title?
← Previous message | Next message →

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004, redux wrote:

> You could also use definition lists, with the link as DT and the
> description as DD

Yes, I could mis-represent data as a definition list when it in fact
isn't, and I could get myself into a trouble with the styling of the
oddity, but I won't; see
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/def.html#impl

--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Wed, Nov 10 2004 4:33PM
Subject: Re: Listing URLs...link the URL text or just the title?
← Previous message | Next message →

jkorpela wrote:
> Yes, I could mis-represent data as a definition list when it in fact
> isn't, and I could get myself into a trouble with the styling of the
> oddity, but I won't; see
> http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/def.html#impl

It's been my long held belief that DL is one of the most perverted
elements in the HTML definition, and a typical example of wooly, fluffy
semantics (or lack thereof) which make most discussions about the "best"
way to mark something up correctly almost ludicrously irrelevant. And
yes, styling can be a right pain, as - in my mind - DL lacks a new type
of child element which can group related DTs and DDs together in a block
(which could then be consistently styled)

Patrick H. Lauke
_____________________________________________________
re

From: michael.brockington
Date: Thu, Nov 11 2004 5:51AM
Subject: Re: Listing URLs...link the URL text or just the title?
← Previous message | Next message →

> (I'm pretty sure some old version(s) of IE had the option of
> printing a table of links at the end of a printed copy, via
> the print settings. I wonder what happened to it.)
>
> --
> Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/


It's still there as a checkbox at the bottom of the print dialog for me, with
IE6 on WinNT4

Mike


********************************************************************

This email may contain information which is privileged or confidential. If you are not the intended recipient of this email, please notify the sender immediately and delete it without reading, copying, storing, forwarding or disclosing its contents to any other person
Thank you

Check us out at http://www.bt.com/consulting

********************************************************************

From: Patrick Lauke
Date: Thu, Nov 11 2004 7:39AM
Subject: Re: Listing URLs...link the URL text or just the title?
← Previous message | No next message

> From: michael.brockington

> It's still there as a checkbox at the bottom of the print
> dialog for me, with IE6 on WinNT4

Specifically, under File > Print... > Options tab.

Had actually forgotten about this. Hmm...may have to spend
some time writing a small Firefox extension to do this as well.

Patrick
________________________________
Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk