Making a very long web page usable

Provide a summary Put critical content and navigation at the top Avoid forcing the user to scroll more than 3 times Make it easy to move within the page Provide something to look at while the page is loading Use an informative title

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What does Jorn Barger do to make The WWW page-length debate more usable, and what else could he have done?

Provide a summary

The page contains 2 summaries:

• one sentence which describes the subject.
• a table of contents which functions as a menu.

Put critical content and navigation at the top

Yes, the page starts with a summary and a table of contents which functions as a menu.

Avoid forcing the user to scroll more than 3 times

You have to scroll a whole lot more to see all the content of The WWW page-length debate

But was there a better alternative? We don't think so:

• Jorn Barger aimed to provide a one-page summary of the whole page-length issue.
• It's easy to print and save because it's all on one page.
• Splitting the content into one page per heading is not an option because some sections are very short - it's a summary of dozens of articles!

This is a good example of how you have to make trade-offs when deciding how long a page should be.

Make it easy to move within the page

We think this is the one trick Jorn Barger missed. There are no links back to the table of contents. Suppose you read a section, have a look at the table of contents, then decide you want to continue with the next section. You can't use the Back button to return to where you were reading. You have only 2 options:

• scroll down and search for the section you just read (could be a long search!)
• remember the title of the section you just read and click it in the table of contents, then scroll to the end of the section.

Provide something to look at while the page is loading

The page certainly does that - you can instantly see what the subject is and the range of topics covered.

Use an informative title

The first line of the page tells you what the page is about.

So does the title in the browser window's title bar.

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