[WEB4LIB] What's good design? :-)

[Daniel Messer]

Jennifer Geard <JLG at ltsa.govt.nz> said:
> 
> Which leads to a question: what are good ways of organising big websites?
> Feel free to address issues of depth (my ideal is one click from the
> homepage to the most topical or heavily-used content, two clicks to most
> content and a maximum of three clicks to any point in the site), breadth
> (how many links can you put on a page before you're just befuddling your
> users) and ways of gathering topics to provide clear access. (Bonus marks
> may be awarded for discussion of selection criteria for terms used in
> headings. ;-)
> 
> Cheers,
>   Jennifer
> 

Sounds like you've got the right ideas to me. The way I've done it before is 
just to sit down with a pencil and paper (or Notepad or Gnotepad if you're so 
inclined) and just sort of sketch it out. I'll organize things into 
catagories and list the links I want to make under those. If I feel I have 
either too many links or too many catagories, I'll look for stuff I can 
merge, refine, or cut completely. You'd be surprised sometimes at the stuff 
you can just leave out, it becomes redundant when compared to other things on 
the site.

One final thing, your number of clicks sounds about right. I try not to 
design anything more than two clicks "deep" but sometimes, well you just 
gotta do it that way. :)

Regards,
Dan

-- 
The subject in question...
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Daniel Messer
Technologies Instructor
Yakima Valley Regional Library
dmesser at yvrls.lib.wa.us
509-452-8541 ext 712
102 N 3rd St  Yakima, WA  98901
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When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
                                         -Hunter S. Thompson