Operation Manual

88 Working with Hyperlinks and Interactivity
♦ If you have more than a couple of links to related material,
consider listing them separately (e.g. as a See Also list), perhaps
with a bit of graphic embellishment.
♦ If your site has a group of interrelated topics, it may be more
efficient to cluster them into a section or sub-section, with its own
main page, rather than creating lots of sideways links between the
topics themselves.
♦ For sequential material, you can create a browse sequence e.g.
using Previous/Next buttons or a special navbar.
♦ As you’re building your Web site, you can use Tools/Hyperlink
Manager... to get a overview of all the links in your site. You can
see the destinations at a glance, check URLs, and display any
hyperlink for closer inspection. The Anchor Manager, also on the
Tools menu, provides similar renaming and removal functions for
anchors.
Hypergraphics
♦ You can have fun designing your own buttons using combinations
of objects and hyperlinks. As for the buttons themselves, they can
have a traditional box or oval shape, or any shape you want. The
QuickShapes flyout features lots of possible shapes (including a
“QuickButton”), and Artistic text works fine. Remember that
whenever the browser’s mouse pointer rolls over a hyperlink, it
will change to a hand. If the object looks like a button, users will
find it and know what to do with it. You can accentuate button
labels by separating them from each other (e.g. with lines or
borders); adding bullets or triangles; or using a filter effect on the
text, such as a drop shadow or emboss.
♦ Hotspots, which are themselves graphic elements, are not
recommended for use over text blocks. They force the text to be
converted to a graphic when the page is published, which aliases
and often distorts the characters. On the other hand, hotspots over a
picture don’t trigger conversion. So if you want clean lettering as
part of your hypergraphic, create it in your paint program. (In
general, use the .GIF format for all non-photographic images you
create for WebPlus Web sites, and work in 256-color mode. See
the tips in the “Graphics” chapter.)