Re: Completely unsatisfied navigational scenario



On 12 Aug, 2005, at 8:08 PM, Adam Hooper wrote:
...
- Clicked the "T" link, to get the web page of professors whose last
names begin with "T".
- Scrolled to the professor, clicked on his name to see his web page.
- Clicked "back" to get to the list of professors whose last names begin with "T".
- Clicked the "M" link to find my next professor.
- Scrolled to my professor, clicked on his name to see his web page.
- Clicked "back" to get back to the professor list.
- Repeated 3 more times.
- Wanted to go back to my first professor's web page.

What I instinctively tried:
- I clicked the little down-arrow next to the "back" button to see a
list of my recently-browsed pages. I felt that those pages ought to have been there.
...

Your expectation is exactly that documented by one of my former lecturers, Andy Cockburn, and his colleagues in a study of how people return to Web pages <http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/andrew.cockburn/papers/ itsRevisitation.pdf>. They have investigated a variety of alternative behaviors for the Back button <http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/andrew.cockburn/web_navigation.html>, which each have their benefits and drawbacks.

Meanwhile, Jakob Nielsen predicted five years ago that "Internet Explorer version 8.0 will be the first good Web browser that actually helps users navigate" <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000109.html>.

Workarounds:
- I could have used the History, but I don't want to open a whole new
window: I feel like those pages should be easily available.

They are easily available in Firefox's "Go" menu, Internet Explorer for Mac's "Go" menu, and Safari's "History" menu. They are not available in Epiphany's "Go" menu, which annoys me <http://mail.gnome.org/archives/epiphany-list/2005-July/msg00055.html>. But even if this was implemented in Epiphany, I'd still have to dither subconsciously (like I do with Safari) wondering whether to choose the Back menu or the Go menu. I never dither when I'm using Exposé.

...
It seems to me this exact same procedure crops up when browsing online
mailing lists and -- most importantly -- Google search results.

Safari's SnapBack buttons are designed for this case, but I've never been able to train myself to use them. (More dithering, I guess.)

I'm well aware that this post has absolutely no material that hasn't
been discussed for ages, but I find it describes a very simple and very
common use case. In fact, I'd guess that the solution to this simple use case would probably cover around 90% of the use cases in which the
"back/forward" paradigm breaks down.

I only post this on the off chance that it inspires somebody.
...

As I said last month, I think any browser with Back and Forward buttons doesn't fulfil Epiphany's claim of "the simplest interface possible for a browser".

--
Matthew Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/



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