Re: new help browser

[skud netizen com au]

On Wed, May 31, 2000 at 07:08:04PM -0500, Dan Mueth wrote:
> 
> Having a list of glossary words appear in the left(navigation) pane would
> mean that it replaces whichever navigation tool the user was using.  It
> also seems to break the control heirarchy.  I like the consistancy of
> having the left pane control the right pane.  In this new picture, the
> flow would bounce back and forth between the left pane changing the right
> pane and the right pane changing the left pane. I think generally people
> expect items at the left/top to control things to the right/bottom, so if
> we follow the two pane navigation/view metaphor, we probably should follow
> these conventions if possible.

What you say makes good sense from an HCI perspective.

> Generally multiple definitions cannot fit on the left, so, as Sasha
> states, there would just be a list of words in the navigation pane.  In
> this case it does not seem to be any more convenient in terms of mouse
> travel, since the user still has to select which word he/she would like to
> see the definition of - so it does not make definitions easier to access.  
> It also seems to be more work for the user, since the reader must compare
> the words in the right pane with those in the left pane to identify which
> ones are in the glossary.  It seems like a lot of this is avoided by just
> highlighting/coloring the word in the right pane to indicate that it is in
> a glossary.

However, we need to make sure that they're highlighted differently to
normal <ulink> type links.

K.

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Kirrily Robert -- <skud@netizen.com.au> -- http://netizen.com.au/
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