Recommended Usage of Top of Page link?

[Jonathan Snook]

I've been contemplating what the recommended usage of a "top of page" link
should be?

Should there only ever be one at the bottom of the page?
Should they be sprinkled at various points on the page?
Or should they be used at all?

Lately, I've been leaning towards the last option because my thought is that
most browsers have a method to make it back to the top of the page (home
button, scroll bar, whatever). It seems I never use the top of page link on
a page. Do people have links to usability studies demonstrating it's
usefullness?

Jonathan

[Lauri Raittila]

In article <yl*******************@news04.bloor.is.net.cable.r ogers.com>,
Jonathan Snook wrote:

I've been contemplating what the recommended usage of a "top of page" link
should be?

Should there only ever be one at the bottom of the page?
What good would it do there?
Should they be sprinkled at various points on the page?
Not really, see below
Or should they be used at all?
No.
It seems I never use the top of page link on a page.

I do, once in six months or so. Usually when I want to be able to use
back button to go back to the point of "top of page" link. For example
when on the top of page is definitions of terms used in text.

But, much, much better than top of page links would be link to terms
definition from each term used.
--
Lauri Raittila <http://www.iki.fi/lr> <http://www.iki.fi/zwak/fonts>
Saapi lähettää meiliä, jos aihe ei liity ryhmään, tai on yksityinen
tjsp., mutta älä lähetä samaa viestiä meilitse ja ryhmään.

[Jonathan Snook]

"Lauri Raittila" <la***@raittila.cjb.net> wrote in message
news:MP************************@news.cis.dfn.de...

In article <yl*******************@news04.bloor.is.net.cable.r ogers.com>,
Jonathan Snook wrote:

I've been contemplating what the recommended usage of a "top of page" link should be?

Should there only ever be one at the bottom of the page?

What good would it do there?

It would get you back to the top of the page where the navigation usually
resides. Or maybe there's a FAQ and after every answer there's a link back
to the top of the page where the index of questions are. Kinda like your
example of terms and definitions.

Should they be sprinkled at various points on the page?

Not really, see below

Or should they be used at all?

No.

No, they shouldn't be used at all? or no, as in disregard that even being an
option and always have a top of page? (I'm guessing the former based on how
you've answered everything else.)

It seems I never use the top of page link on a page.

I do, once in six months or so. Usually when I want to be able to use
back button to go back to the point of "top of page" link. For example
when on the top of page is definitions of terms used in text.

But, much, much better than top of page links would be link to terms
definition from each term used.

[Stan Brown]

In article
<yl*******************@news04.bloor.is.net.cable.r ogers.com> in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Jonathan Snook
<go***************@snook.ca> wrote:

I've been contemplating what the recommended usage of a "top of page" link
should be?

Should there only ever be one at the bottom of the page?
Should they be sprinkled at various points on the page?
Or should they be used at all?

I think they should not be. I personally find them irritating. If I
want to go back to the top of the page, I can use the scroll bar of
hit Ctrl+Home, thank you very much. :-)

This is to some extent a personal thing, but to me they look almost
as amateurish as "click here".

I had peppered my Web site with them in the early days, without
really thinking about why I was following this custom. Gradually
I've been weeding them out.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

[P]

> I've been contemplating what the recommended usage of a "top of page" link

should be?
Good question, without any quick, easy answers. I think you're right to look for usability studies, and I'd be interested to see those too.

I think we have to be careful not to assume that the average user is similar to people such as ourselves who spend a lot of time on the web. For instance, I (like most heavy-web-users, I figure) am pretty good with a scrollbar - I can grab that sucker and zip up to the top of the page in an instant, and probably would usually do that before it ever registered in my consciousness that there was a "Top of Page" link.

But less-constant web users may well use Top-of-Page links a lot. When I watch "more normal" folks use the web, my impression is that they find "getting around" in general much more laborious. So anything that might provide some help - if indeed these links do - might be worth providing.
Should there only ever be one at the bottom of the page?
I think this is a very logical place for them. As you said, navigation is usually at the top of the page, and it provides a quick jump back.
Should they be sprinkled at various points on the page?

If we conclude that typical site visitors make use of them regularly, then I think it's fair to say that, on long pages, they are useful for the same reasons that they're useful at the bottom.

Good question, and I'm interested to see other thoughtful answers.

--
P@tty Ayers
http://www.WebDevBiz.com
Web Design Contract, Estimate Worksheet
--

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Sun, Jul 6, P@tty Ayers inscribed lines that stretched out
the office door and halfway down the corridor (now reflowed to
usenet conventions):

I think we have to be careful not to assume that the average user is
similar to people such as ourselves who spend a lot of time on the
web.
Indeed. So if you're going to offer them anything, *make it count*:
don't just teach them some dead-end stunt that only works on your own
pages and maybe a few others. They spend most of their time on
_other_ web sites, so give them something that you can be confident
will work there also.

I.e if you are going to do anything, then help them to find the tools
that are already there on their own browser.
For instance, I (like most heavy-web-users, I figure) am pretty
good with a scrollbar
I find page up/down/home/end keys to be considerably less effort, and
cause less wrist strain. Especially on the thinkpad where I've
usually forgotten to bring the mouse and have to use that awkward
nipple thing in the keyboard. However, that wasn't your point, so
let's move on...
But less-constant web users may well use Top-of-Page links a lot.
Maybe they do, at the beginning; I really don't know. Do you want
them to be stuck with training-wheels all their life?

To me they're almost as pointlessly intrusive as "click here", and
look just as stupid on the browser's "summary of links on this page"
menu.
When I watch "more normal" folks use the web, my impression is that
they find "getting around" in general much more laborious.

Which is why it's so important to help them find the tools that they
already have on their browser, that will work reliably on every page
they view[1] - not confuse them with endless variations on different
ersatz solutions on every site that they visit.

[1] excluding hostile javascripting by some deezyner, admittedly.
(but I have an answer to that kind of problem, of course...)

Just imagine if the TV didn't have its own volume control, and you had
to learn a different procedure for adjusting the volume on every
different channel you viewed. As a very rough analogy.

[Dave Patton]

"Jonathan Snook" <go***************@snook.ca> wrote in
news:yl*******************@news04.bloor.is.net.cab le.rogers.com:

I've been contemplating what the recommended usage of a "top of page"
link should be?

I had thought that they were something useful, but given some
of the responses to your posting, now I'm not sure.

Anyone want to comment on this example:
http://members.shaw.ca/davepatton/mapcompare.html

I don't disagree with the comments about using the
browser's Back button, keyboard keys, or the scrollbar,
but does it really detract from the page to have the
"Top" links? I concede the point about having "Top"
showing up multiple times in the 'list of links' for
this page, but the page, by the nature of its content,
is of limited use unless it is being viewed in a
graphics-capable browser with images enabled.

--
Dave Patton
Canadian Coordinator, the Degree Confluence Project
http://www.confluence.org dpatton at confluence dot org
My website: http://members.shaw.ca/davepatton/
Vancouver/Whistler - host of the 2010 Winter Olympics

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Sun, Jul 6, Dave Patton inscribed on the eternal scroll:

Anyone want to comment on this example:
http://members.shaw.ca/davepatton/mapcompare.html
I'll comment, if you wish...
but does it really detract from the page to have the "Top" links?
What's the purpose, actually? The "top" link simply goes back to the
Overview. I would have thought that the point of having an Overview
was to confirm that the page is really what they were looking for.
Once they've read that, they aren't normally wanting to go back and
read it again - if the page really _is_ what they want then they'll be
browsing around the rest of it, whereas if it isn't, they'll simply
leave, I would have thought.

On the other hand, a user of a browser which _doesn't_ offer a list of
links *might* just find it convenient to have a quick link to the
page's menu.

Could I also recommend making use of link rel/rev for some key
navigation features? It does no harm for those benighted browsers
that have no support for it, but it rates to be a useability
enhancement for those which have (which doesn't mean only Mozilla and
Lynx...)
I concede the point about having "Top"
showing up multiple times in the 'list of links' for
this page, but the page, by the nature of its content,
is of limited use unless it is being viewed in a
graphics-capable browser with images enabled.

I'm not sure that's really true, and on two counts:

1. You seem to have a hidden agenda about 'list of links' menus.
Maybe you think they exist only on Lynx? But even IE5/5.5 had the
"IE5 web accessories" add-on from MS. Mozilla is offering me a whole
list of your links, and their (in some cases derived from
unfortunately-chosen alt attributes[1]) link texts. Take a look (e.g
view->page info->links) and see what I mean. Opera also offers a
view->links popup menu. In Opera's case at least you can have the
links sorted, such that the Top links all come together.

2. someone who's got limited bandwidth[2] might still decide to have
image loading switched off, and only load the images that they then
decide are of relevance to them.

But here's my summing-up: I think you've made a good choice with your
navigation menu, but if there was one place I'd want a link to from
various parts of the document it would _not_ be the Overview at the
top - it would be the navigation menu, which is at the bottom (on
non-CSS browsers) or right-hand column (on CSS-enabled browsers).

(Your page is a disaster unfortunately on NN4: couldn't you be
persuaded to use one of the recommended styelsheet-hiding
techniques?).

best regards

[1] The alt attribute is supposed to be a textual _alternative_ to the
image, i.e to replace whatever function the image was serving. These
thumbnail images are serving as links to larger images of the maps, so
in my view the alternative texts should name the target of the link,
e.g "Etopo 1:50,000 092G06 topographic map": it's misleading to have
an alt text on the thumbnail link saying "... thumbnail", giving the
false impression that the link leads to a thumbnail when it in fact
leads to a large image.

[2] and there are plenty of such folks on the WWW still - they haven't
all got cable/DSL access, and things are liable to get worse
(increasing use of wireless and portable appliances) before they get
better (deployment of 3G technology in rural areas?) as far as I can
see.

[Randal L. Schwartz]

>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Ley <ji*@jibbering.com> writes:

Jim> "awkward nipple thing" ??? I guess that's another way I'm weird then
Jim> seen as the nipple is my favourite pointing device. - Especially as
Jim> the thinkpad scrolls just by moving it up and down and pressing the
Jim> middle blue button.

I suppose this is still near on-topic... :)

I find the force-sensitive stick to be hard to use as well. I'm much
better at managing a position (trackpad) than a force (trackstick).

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - [phone]
<me****@stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training!

[Nick Kew]

In article <3f***************@news.cis.dfn.de>, one of infinite monkeys
at the keyboard of ji*@jibbering.com (Jim Ley) wrote:

usually forgotten to bring the mouse and have to use that awkward
nipple thing in the keyboard.

"awkward nipple thing" ??? I guess that's another way I'm weird then
seen as the nipple is my favourite pointing device.

Seems to depend on the quality (or lack thereof).

I *much* prefer a decent trackpad. But on my current laptop, the
trackpad is so useless as to be worse than the nipple.

YMMV.

--
Nick Kew

In urgent need of paying work - see http://www.webthing.com/~nick/cv.html

[Isofarro]

Jim Ley wrote:

On Sun, 6 Jul 2003 18:07:04 +0200, "Alan J. Flavell"
<fl*****@mail.cern.ch> wrote:

I find page up/down/home/end keys to be considerably less effort, and
cause less wrist strain. Especially on the thinkpad where I've
usually forgotten to bring the mouse and have to use that awkward
nipple thing in the keyboard.

"awkward nipple thing" ??? I guess that's another way I'm weird then
seen as the nipple is my favourite pointing device. - Especially as
the thinkpad scrolls just by moving it up and down and pressing the
middle blue button.

Same here. Out of six laptops, four have the thinkpad pressure sensitive
nipple. One has a Fujitsu "something similar but not as small" (Fujitsu
B110). The only one with the trackpad is the iBook - and its the best
trackpad I've ever used. Still prefer the Thinkpad style though.
--
Iso.
FAQs: http://html-faq.com http://alt-html.org http://allmyfaqs.com/
Recommended Hosting: http://www.affordablehost.com/
Web Standards: http://www.webstandards.org/

[Eric Jarvis]

Alan J. Flavell wrote:

On Sun, Jul 6, P@tty Ayers inscribed lines that stretched out
the office door and halfway down the corridor (now reflowed to
usenet conventions):

For instance, I (like most heavy-web-users, I figure) am pretty
good with a scrollbar

I find page up/down/home/end keys to be considerably less effort, and
cause less wrist strain. Especially on the thinkpad where I've
usually forgotten to bring the mouse and have to use that awkward
nipple thing in the keyboard. However, that wasn't your point, so
let's move on...

and I'm addicted to using a wheel mouse

offer all the options is the golden rule...because there
is always some blighter out there doing the thing you
considered extremely unlikely

--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
"Hey Lord don't ask me questions
There ain't no answer in me"

[P]

I.e if you are going to do anything, then help them to find the tools
that are already there on their own browser.

With all due respect for your perspective on this, I don't see it that way. I don't feel it's my job to train users in any way, but only to build web pages which are as easy as possible for them to use the very first time, without making them think.

--
P@tty Ayers
http://www.WebDevBiz.com
Web Design Contract, Estimate Worksheet
--

[P]

On Sun, Jul 6, P@tty Ayers inscribed lines that stretched out
the office door and halfway down the corridor (now reflowed to
usenet conventions):

I'm a little mystified at this.. my newsreader is set to wrap lines at 76 characters. Do you have the same problem with this post?

--
P@tty Ayers
http://www.WebDevBiz.com
Web Design Contract, Estimate Worksheet
--

[Dave Patton]

"P@tty Ayers" <pa****@NOSPAMnc.rr.com> wrote in
news:8L*********************@twister.southeast.rr. com:

> On Sun, Jul 6, P@tty Ayers inscribed lines that stretched out
> the office door and halfway down the corridor (now reflowed to
> usenet conventions):

I'm a little mystified at this.. my newsreader is set to wrap lines at
76 characters. Do you have the same problem with this post?

Patty - see my reply titled
"OT: wordwrap, was: icon/image in titlebar".

--
Dave Patton
Canadian Coordinator, the Degree Confluence Project
http://www.confluence.org dpatton at confluence dot org
My website: http://members.shaw.ca/davepatton/
Vancouver/Whistler - host of the 2010 Winter Olympics

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Mon, Jul 7, P@tty Ayers inscribed on the eternal scroll, lines
which when reflowed to usenet conventions read thus:

I.e if you are going to do anything, then help them to find the tools
that are already there on their own browser.
With all due respect for your perspective on this, I don't see it
that way. I don't feel it's my job to train users in any way,

Well, neither do I, usually - I write for readers who can be assumed
to understand what they're doing, and I expect those who don't to have
the intelligence to find out. After all, one wouldn't expect every TV
show to start with instructions on how to use the volume control etc.

But _if_ one is going to offer them anything, then I reckon it needs
to be something that's worth their effort, i.e that they can use on
any other web page too.
only to build web pages which are as easy as possible for them to
use the very first time, without making them think.

I'm not sure that I've ever made a web page that was designed to avoid
making anyone think. Ho hum.

[Dave Patton]

"Alan J. Flavell" <fl*****@mail.cern.ch> wrote in
news:Pi*******************************@lxplus086.c ern.ch:

Anyone want to comment on this example:
http://members.shaw.ca/davepatton/mapcompare.html
I've made a revised version - comments/criticisms welcome :-)
http://members.shaw.ca/davepatton/mapcompareX.html
but does it really detract from the page to have the "Top" links?
What's the purpose, actually? The "top" link simply goes back to the
Overview.

I changed all the "Top" links to "Menu", and they now link
to the page's navigation menu.
Could I also recommend making use of link rel/rev for some key
navigation features?
The revised page make use of this.
The parts I'm not sure of is how it looks in other browsers
(I'm using Mozilla 1.3), and whether or not my choices for
"start", "parent", and "first" make sense to others.
1. You seem to have a hidden agenda about 'list of links' menus.
Maybe you think they exist only on Lynx?
No, no "agenda", and I don't know Lynx, but I use Mozilla :-)
(Your page is a disaster unfortunately on NN4: couldn't you be
persuaded to use one of the recommended styelsheet-hiding
techniques?).
I've added 'media="all"', so NN4 shouldn't use my styles at all.
[1] The alt attribute is supposed to be a textual _alternative_ to the
image, i.e to replace whatever function the image was serving. These
thumbnail images are serving as links to larger images of the maps, so
in my view the alternative texts should name the target of the link,
e.g "Etopo 1:50,000 092G06 topographic map": it's misleading to have
an alt text on the thumbnail link saying "... thumbnail", giving the
false impression that the link leads to a thumbnail when it in fact
leads to a large image.

I can see this both ways:
- the alt text describes the image content
- the alt text describes the image function
Anyway, I don't disagree with you, and have changed the text.

--
Dave Patton
Canadian Coordinator, the Degree Confluence Project
http://www.confluence.org dpatton at confluence dot org
My website: http://members.shaw.ca/davepatton/
Vancouver/Whistler - host of the 2010 Winter Olympics

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Mon, Jul 7, Dave Patton inscribed on the eternal scroll:

[1] The alt attribute is supposed to be a textual _alternative_ to the
image, i.e to replace whatever function the image was serving.

[..]

You do realise you're tangling with someone who's made this their
special subject, don't you? ;-)
I can see this both ways:
- the alt text describes the image content
No, that's the job of the optional "title=" attribute on the <img...>
- the alt text describes the image function
IMO it shouldn't "describe" the funtion. The text's job is to
actually _be_ the function.

(Even the WAI discussions actually got confused about that sometimes.)

If you did a job of work and they had no ready cash to pay you, would
you be content with a description of a check/cheque, or wouldn't you
rather actually get one?

The alt text should genuinely _do_ the job (i.e in this case serve as
a fully-functioned text link to whatever it is that it links to), not
just be a "description of" a link.

Or as someone else perceptively said (though I'm afraid I forgot who
it was), "think of the text and the image as alternative
representations of content", i.e the aim is to make each an
alternative full-value way of conveying some underlying purpose -
don't make the one look like a cheap substitute for the other.
Anyway, I don't disagree with you, and have changed the text.

cheers

[P]

> I'm not sure that I've ever made a web page that was designed to avoid

making anyone think.

To avoid making them think about the *interface*. I thought that was clear.
:-)

--
P@tty Ayers
http://www.WebDevBiz.com
Web Design Contract, Estimate Worksheet
--

[nic]

"Alan J. Flavell" <fl*****@mail.cern.ch> wrote in message news:<Pi*******************************@lxplus086. cern.ch>...

On Sun, Jul 6, P@tty Ayers inscribed lines that stretched out
the office door and halfway down the corridor (now reflowed to
usenet conventions):

I think we have to be careful not to assume that the average user is
similar to people such as ourselves who spend a lot of time on the
web.
Indeed. So if you're going to offer them anything, *make it count*:
don't just teach them some dead-end stunt that only works on your own
pages and maybe a few others. They spend most of their time on
_other_ web sites, so give them something that you can be confident
will work there also.

Unless you are writing a website for children it is inadvisable to try
to teach your users at all. "most adult users hate instructions and
try to use websites without having to read about what they are
supposed to do." (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020414.html)

I really doubt if anyone is going to need to be taught what a "back to
top" link does, so long as it is allowed to look like a link and the
text is reasonably self explanatory the meaning will be clear.

If you have to have pages where lots of scrolling is called for
(questionable but not unacceptable usability) then you probably have
the navigation at the top (at the bottom would be a usability
disaster). An occasional "back to top" doubles as a "back to
navigation" link in this situation which may be useful for some users.
Large pages will probably have several internal links for navigating
within the page and skipping past bits the reader is less interested
in, the "back to top" link may have a valid place in such a design.

Just imagine if the TV didn't have its own volume control, and you had
to learn a different procedure for adjusting the volume on every
different channel you viewed. As a very rough analogy.

A link is a link, if it looks like a link and says "back to top" and
does exactly what it says then there is no new learning involved.

--
Nic

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Tue, Jul 8, nic inscribed on the eternal scroll:

Unless you are writing a website for children it is inadvisable to try
to teach your users at all. "most adult users hate instructions and
try to use websites without having to read about what they are
supposed to do." (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020414.html)
I really did stress _if_ you are going to try to offer them features
(viz. which duplicate functions that their browser already has). I'm
by no means recommending that you always should!
I really doubt if anyone is going to need to be taught what a "back to
top" link does,
Though it's questionable why they would want one.
so long as it is allowed to look like a link and the
text is reasonably self explanatory the meaning will be clear.
So now they'll start expecting training wheels on every other page,
right?
If you have to have pages where lots of scrolling is called for
(questionable but not unacceptable usability) then you probably have
the navigation at the top
FWIW my navigation, for pages that contain substantive content, is (a)
in link rel/rev, and (b) at the bottom.

My argument is that if they're interested in my page, then they'll
want to read it before deciding to go somewhere else. If they aren't
interested in my page, they'll have no problem leaving, no matter
where I put the navigation.

Of course, pages that are intended as menus of navigation links are a
different matter entirely.
(at the bottom would be a usability disaster).
That depends on the kind of page. IMHO the page we were recently
asked to review had made a good choice: put the navigation at the end
(so that users of non-visual browsers get stuck straight in to the
substantive content - and that goes for the indexing robots too, which
is also a consideration) and then position that section at the top
right with CSS for visual browsers.
An occasional "back to top" doubles as a "back to
navigation" link in this situation

Quite: what they really want is a way of going to the navigation menu.
And if you have that, then there's much less reason to want to stuff
an entire navigation menu in their way at the top of a page of content
when their whole aim in going there was to get at the page's actual
content, not at a navigation menu.

Just imagine if the TV didn't have its own volume control, and you had
to learn a different procedure for adjusting the volume on every
different channel you viewed. As a very rough analogy.

A link is a link, if it looks like a link and says "back to top" and
does exactly what it says then there is no new learning involved.

I repeat my view that such a thing would only be genuinely useful if
you can rely on there being "one just like that" on every other page
on the web. Whereas the browser's navigation tools already _do_ work
on every web page (unless the deezyner has sabotaged them, but we
don't talk about that in polite company...). (And, by the way, I'd
say that discerning readers can get irritated when they feel they're
being patronised by the insertion of training wheels...)

I found it rather comforting when I heard a radio presenter starting
off the usual spiel "find us on the web at w w w dot b b c dot..."
and then broke off "well, you know how to use the web by now".

[kurt behn]

"Alan J. Flavell" <fl*****@mail.cern.ch> wrote in message news:<Pi*******************************@lxplus086. cern.ch>...

Just imagine if the TV didn't have its own volume control, and you had
to learn a different procedure for adjusting the volume on every
different channel you viewed. As a very rough analogy.

But it's not like one is disabling the other functionality, it's just
adding a new (small) way to get around. Personally, i think they are
overused but also just about as easy to ignore as anything out there.
and i do think there are certain page styles that can benefit from
these kinds of links, especially for less seasoned users.

i've definitely seen users navigating through an <a name=""> organized
page without necessarily realizing that it was all just one long html
(which may or may not be the best design in some cases). and in that
case, "menu" or something of that sort is definitely more descriptive
than "top" since to some people, the idea that it is the "top" of
something may be somewhat lost on them.

anywho.
k

[nic]

kb***@geonetics.com (kurt behn) wrote in message news:<39*************************@posting.google.c om>...

i've definitely seen users navigating through an <a name=""> organized
page without necessarily realizing that it was all just one long html

I've done it myself on the W3C site where most of the specs are split
into multiple pages but the XML one is not (for no obvious reason). It
comes of paying attention to the content rather than the means of
delivery.

--
Nic