Re: Writing for on-line

["Ridder, Fred" <F -dot- Ridder -at- DIALOGIC -dot- COM>]

David Knopf's response to Jessica N. Lange regarding Browse sequences
contained the following:

>> I've always liked 'em and consider those little arrow buttons to be
an
>> invitation to explore. I note that many web sites make use of the
concept,
>> whether by using arrow buttons or Next/Previous text; and of course
the
>> browser itself has built-in "browse sequence buttons".

>Sorry but very few people will ever "explore" your help file. And those
>buttons in your Web browser have a very different function than browse
buttons
>in a help system. In a browser, Next and Previous let the user move
back and
>forth through a set of pages they have already visited, not through a
linear
>path defined by the Web designer.

First of all, Jessica's comment referred to arrow buttons or
Next/Previous
links that appear in the web page itself. These are links inserted by
the
page's author to link to pages that are related in some sequential way--
very much the HTML equivalent of a single, fixed Browse sequence in a
help file or flipping through the pages of a chapter in a printed book.

The buttons David refers to are the browser's navigation buttons, which
are labeled Back and Forward in every browser I have ever used precisely
to distinguish their function from that of Previous and Next links in
the
displayed file.

In other words, you are talking about different things.

Fred Ridder  (mailto:f -dot- ridder -at- dialogic -dot- com)
Senior Technical Writer
Dialogic Corporation, Parsippany, NJ

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