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To access the contents, click the chapter and section titles.
HTML 4.0 Sourcebook
Navigational Links The second navigational feature is the collection of text buttons linked to important related documents. These buttons replace the navigational cues available in a printed book and let readers quickly find their place in the collection. Using the “Prev” and “Next” buttons, the document can be read sequentially; or it can be accessed nonsequentially, using “ToC” or “Index.” The “Up” button is linked to the top page of the local section—for example, if this were a page from Section 2, the “Up” button might link to the first page of Section 2. Part (B) of Figure 4.3 shows how such pages could be organized. For convenience, a top-of-section page might contain a brief section introduction, and perhaps a contents listing for the section. This lets the user move “Up” for an overview of the section, without having to return all the way to the full table of contents. Simplified Authoring—HTML Page Templates Adding all this navigational and design information to a page need not be a lot of work. When building a large collection, you can use HTML document templates. Such templates contain all the generic markup, but not the text, image, or other content. You then make a copy of the template, edit the template to insert the desired content, and quickly prepare the desired document. Since all your pages need navigation tools, you can create the template with these components built-in; then to create pages, all you need do is edit the templates and add the correct URLs. Some informational hypertext links are provided in this example linear collection—these connect to resources that are not really part of the collection, but that provide information useful to the user. For example, the “Feedback” link might connect to a gateway program (or simply a mailto URL) that lets the visitor send feedback to the document author(s), while the “Info” link could provide information explaining the meaning and function of the navigation buttons/bar. Both features should be present in a well-designed collection. Clean Design and Dated Content The last thing to stress is the importance of clean page design and the use of a similar design for all pages in the collection. Thus, if you decide to use centered H2 headings for main sections and left-justified H3 headings for subsections, you should do this for all pages. This reinforces the familiar pattern implied by the graphic and banner design, and makes it easy for a reader to navigate within each page, as well as across the collection. Figure 4.4 Template HTML document for a linear collection, illustrating the use of navigational links within the page design. Each page in a collection should have a similar banner and labeling text or graphics that uniquely identify the pages within the collection. Figure 4.5 shows this document as displayed by Netscape Navigator. Note that the text adjacent to the logo (“INFORMATION COMMONS” and “Help with E-Mail”) is part of the header graphic.
<HTML><HEAD>
Fig:<TITLE> REL and REV Attributes for Hypertext Links</TITLE>
</HEAD><BODY>
<P ALIGN=“center”><IMG ALIGN=“bottom” SRC=“iclogo.gif”
ALT=“{Information Commons — HTML Docmentation]”><BR>
[<A HREF=“page2_1.html”>Prev</A>]
[<A HREF=“page2_3.html”>Next</A>]
[<A HREF=“page2_0.html”>Up</A>]
. . .
[<A HREF=“contents.html” REL=“contents”><B>ToC</B></A>]
[<A HREF=“/cgi-bin/index.pl” REL=“index”><B>Index</B></A>]
. . .
[<A HREF=“info.html”><EM>Info</EM></A>]
[<A HREF=“/cgi-bin/feedback.pl”><EM>Feedback</EM></A>]
<HR>
<H2> REL and REV Attributes </H2>
<P> REL and REV attribute are used, with LINK and A (anchor)
elements, to describe the relationship between the document
containing the element, and the document referenced by the
hypertext link .....
<P> And yet more babble about REL and REV...
<HR>
<CENTER> <EM><A HREF=“mailto:[email protected]”>IC
HTML Documentation</A> . . . . . .</EM>
<EM>Last Update:</EM> 12 September 1995 </CENTER>
</BODY></HTML>
Note also in Figure 4.5 that the page is dated and contains a hypertext link to the author or maintainer of the page. Although such features are not necessary on every page, dating pages lets visitors know when the material was last modified, while the feedback mechanism lets the author hear what the readers think. You should use a dating scheme that will not be misinterpreted internationally—thus the form 8/9/98 is not ideal, since some countries use the order day/month/year, while others use month/day/year. If you don’t want feedback, you can omit the feedback link—but my experience is that feedback is overwhelmingly positive and constuctive, and helps enormously when building and maintaning large document collection.
If you use cascading style sheets, you can use the style sheet to define many of the desired layout features—which will then be adopted by all pages that use the style sheet. However, this will still only work if you have been consistent in your use of the HTML elements within the documents.
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