[drupal-docs] usability of "Avoid all embedded headings"

[Djun Kim]

I really don't want to reopen this debate.

We have gone through this discussion already, and have added this
guideline to the style guide.    The page you are referring to merely
explains or amplifies some of the reasons we decided to STRONGLY
discourage embedded headers.

I have spent tens of hours editing the handbook.  I've seen *hundreds* 
of
examples of abused embedded headers, and only a handful of
examples where there wasn't clearly a better approach.

This is a GUIDELINE, not a hard and fast rule.  Let's apply the
80/20 rule - let anything that happens in fewer than 20% of the cases
be an EXCEPTION, and deal with it as such.  I  would say that
we're actually looking at fewer than 5% of cases.

Re: Morkes and Nielsen.  I couldn't agree more with their
conclusions.  However, they would benefit from applying their
own findings.

FIRST make the page concise.   Get rid of those ridiculous
pages that scroll on for screen after screen.  How? By breaking
them up along the lines of their embedded sections.

The shorter pages are immediately more scannable.

     Djun


On 3 Jun 2005, at 7:11 AM, Charlie Lowe wrote:

> I'd like us to address the usability of forbidding all heading elements
> in handbook pages per these authoring guidelines:
>
> http://drupal.org/node/24221
>
> I don't disagree that longer pages which have multiple sections should
> not be broken up into multiple pages, and I understand this is 
> desirable
> so that Drupal can automatically generate headings for printer-friendly
> output and other export of multiple handbook pages. But it's a common
> practice in web writing to use subheadings to make a single page more
> scannable. It is not always advantageous to the reader to break a text
> with multiple small subsections into multiple pages where the reader 
> has
> to follow multiple links just to see if the text in each is applicable.
> Scanning one page can be much easier in certain instances; the
> alternative can also be too click-heavy. Sometimes, we don't want to
> push readers to follow links.
>
> Granted, as suggested, definition lists might work in certain instances
> (however, I think the styling might require more padding for DT
> elements). But I'm not convinced it will work for all. For example, see
>
> John Morkes and Jakob Nielsen's "Concise, SCANNABLE, and Objective:
> How to Write for the Web"
>
> http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/writing.html
>
> This article could definitely be broken up into multiple sections on
> multiple pages. But if you look at the "Findings" section, IMHO, the
> text would be more effective with the subsections for "Findings"
> included on the "Findings" page, and DT/DL elements don't seem the
> proper way to style it.
>
> Any thoughts on this?
>
> Charlie
> -- 
> [ drupal-docs | http://lists.drupal.org/listinfo/drupal-docs ]
>
--
Djun M. Kim, Director                           
djun.kim at cielosystems.com
Cielo Systems Inc.                              
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