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Donica H. Mensing  wrote:

>If, as Eric says, pop up windows disturb the flow of thought, then doesn't
>breaking up a linear story into a long list of separate pieces do the same
>thing? I know Jakob Nielsen recommends chunks, but I think he means chunks
>written as individual pieces with individual inverted pyramids, not just
>a print story chopped up online.

Exactctly! Each page needs to be a focused piece that links to other pages
with additional info on yet more focused topics. A single flow should not
be broken up into pages since that leads to page-turning whih is slower and
more unpleasant than simple scrolling. The only rationale I have heard for
splitting up a story over multiple pages is that it provides for more page
views and thus has room for more advertising banners.

I do recommend making pages as short as possible and to reduce scrolling.
But the way to do this is to structure the information into multiple flows,
not to stutter through a single flow in an unpleasant manner. Once you have
done your best to structure the story for online and you are left with a
certain amount of text it is much the lesser evil to have users scroll
through that text than to subject them to page-turning.

(Small extra piece of advice: If you ever do use page-turning, be sure to
indicate the number of pages - e.g., "Page 3 of 5" or something like that.)



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