Operation Manual

Working with Hyperlinks and Interactivity 89
♦ Hypergraphics give you an alternative to using hyperlinked text,
which is best reserved for use within body text. For example, if
you had a set of pages arranged alphabetically, you might like to
create an alphabet users could click on to jump to a particular page.
This could be done with a string of 26 hyperlinked text characters,
but a creative alphabet graphic with hotspots over each letter
would undoubtedly end up looking better.
♦ You can use hypergraphics to create fanciful pictorial menus,
visual indexes, maps, diagrams, and other clickable previews of the
content on your site. As we said, they’re fun. Use them!
Navigation elements
♦ If you’re just starting to develop your site, make sure the overall
structure is clear before you design a navigation bar. Decide what
your sections will be, then choose a concise button label for each
section. Sketch some designs on paper. If there’s a chance you may
add more sections in the future, allow room for the navbar to
accommodate a new button or two.
♦ Provide links to the Home page as well as to the various sectional
main pages.
♦ Users should perceive the navigation bar as a fixed component of
the page background throughout the site, keep it in the same
position from one section to another.
♦ Finally, while we don’t encourage long pages that force the user to
scroll on and on, it’s handy to know that a hyperlink to the current
page will force the browser to redisplay the top of the page. So in
situations that seem to call for it, you can include a TOP button
(typically with a small up-arrow) at the bottom of your page,
linked to the current page. After all, the user worked hard to get to
the bottom—why make them climb all the way back up?