I suppose this is a meta-html question, but it seems to go
directly to an authoring issue.

Which order of next, home (menu, index, main, contents), prev links do you
prefer, and why?

1. next | home | prev

or

2. prev | home | next


1. puts next first in the tabbing order, which is convenient
because it is presumed that most users, most of the time, will
want to follow ordered pages in order.

2. I suppose has an intuitive appeal to those of us with
languages that are read from left to right and so seems
reasonable for a page in English.

Both schemes seem to occur with some frequency, but I am not
sure which is more common. If one is much more common than the
other, then that might be an argument for it, since presumably
it would be what most users expect most of the time.

I guess

home | prev | next

and

next | prev | home

might also have some adherents if home (menu, contents, index,
main) is considered as the first page.

--
Lars Eighner eighner@io.com http://www.larseighner.com/
I don't see posts from or threads started from googlegroups.
"There's one thing ... that I do like about Rumsfeld, he's just a little bit
crazy, OK"? --Thomas Friedman, _The New York Times_

Lars Eighner wrote:[color=blue]
>
> 2. prev | home | next
>[/color]
I vote for this one.
Being older I know about books and things. I flip to the left to go
back, flip to the right to go forward.
Actually I have never seen #1. It make sense for languages that are
RTL. But not for western languages.

--
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(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

Lars Eighner wrote:
[color=blue]
> 1. next | home | prev[/color]

I will never ever (well, almost never ever) follow such a link scheme
through multiple pages.

I always get the feeling I'm being coerced to grub though all of
somebody's pages, and I let nobody coerce me.

If you want me to stay on your site, give me a flexible and
compregensive navigation menu instead.

Greg

begin quotation
from Lars Eighner <eighner@io.com>
in message <slrndgho8t.80t.eighner@goodwill.io.com>
posted at 2005-08-21T20:19[color=blue]
> I suppose this is a meta-html question, but it seems to go
> directly to an authoring issue.
>
> Which order of next, home (menu, index, main, contents), prev links do you
> prefer, and why?
>
> 1. next | home | prev
>
> or
>
> 2. prev | home | next[/color]

Generally the latter of these makes the most sense.
[color=blue]
> 1. puts next first in the tabbing order, which is convenient
> because it is presumed that most users, most of the time, will
> want to follow ordered pages in order.[/color]

I thought that's what <link> in the head was for, which could be
assigned a keyboard shortcut such that the user could hit e.g.
Alt-PageDown or something similar.

--
___ _ _____ |*|
/ __| |/ / _ \ |*| Shawn K. Quinn
\__ \ ' < (_) | |*| skquinn@speakeasy.net
|___/_|\_\__\_\ |*| Houston, TX, USA

On Sun, 21 Aug 2005, Lars Eighner wrote:
[color=blue]
> Which order of next, home (menu, index, main, contents), prev links do you
> prefer, and why?[/color]

I use <link rel=...>
http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/use-links
The order doesn't matter.

--
Top-posting.
What's the most irritating thing on Usenet?

In our last episode,
<Pine.GSO.4.44.0508221603330.11951-100000@s5b004.rrzn-user.uni-hannover.de>,
the lovely and talented Andreas Prilop
broadcast on comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:
[color=blue]
> On Sun, 21 Aug 2005, Lars Eighner wrote:[/color]
[color=blue][color=green]
>> Which order of next, home (menu, index, main, contents), prev links do you
>> prefer, and why?[/color][/color]
[color=blue]
> I use <link rel=...>
> http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/use-links
> The order doesn't matter.[/color]

Evidently neither do the people with user-agents that don't do
anything useful with links in the head element.

--
Lars Eighner eighner@io.com http://www.larseighner.com/
I don't see posts from or threads started from googlegroups.
"Shhh! Be vewwy, vewwy quiet! I'm hunting Muswims!"
- President Elmer Bush

On Mon, 22 Aug 2005, Lars Eighner wrote:
[color=blue][color=green]
>> I use <link rel=...>
>> http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/use-links
>> The order doesn't matter.[/color]
>
> Evidently neither do the people with user-agents that don't do
> anything useful with links in the head element.[/color]

They deserve to suffer. There should be some advantage for
people with Mozilla or other modern browsers.

--
Top-posting.
What's the most irritating thing on Usenet?