Wise Young
02-16-2002, 09:15 AM
This bulletin board is designed to be as accessible as possible with a minimum of mouse clicks. Specifically, the forum display format provides:
1. Large targets for mouse clicks. You may have noticed that I have set larger text sizes and wide spacings in the front page. This increases the mouse click target for people who may be using head mouses. There are several small profile mouse click targets that I have been trying to fix: the small and closely spaced buttons for posting. I think that it is a problem because some people are hitting the wrong button when they are posting.
2. Minimum scrolling. The targets are also in the middle of the window and most of the popular forums can be clicked without scrolling. Scrolling is a problem for many people because the Windows has very small button for scrolling. You have to press small buttons at the edge of the window. By the way, I think this may be one reason why relatively few people participate in the featured poll which is at the bottom of the main page. Several people have written to me saying that they never knew that there was a poll at the bottom of the page. Many people may not know that they can scroll the window (at least on Internet Explorer on Mac) by hitting the space bar.
3. Mimumum number of mouse clicks to view or post topics. At the present, if a person sets up the carecure bulletin board as his/her home page, he/she can view the most recent topic with one mouse click, the most recent message in any of the most recent 50 topic inside a forum with two mouse clicks, and post a new topic or posting with three mouse clicks. This is about as low as I can make it.
4. Inverted posting order. As you know, this bulletin board always has the latest topic or posting on top. This again was chosen to minimize mouse clicks and scrolling. While some people have been confused by the inverse time order of posting, it allows people to see the latest postings in long threads without having to click small buttons for secondary pages.
5. Long topic and message listings. To mimimize the necessity of going to secondary pages to see topics and messages, I have set each forum to display 50 topics and 20 messages per topic on the first page.
I would welcome suggestions from members concerning ways to help improve navigation.
Wise.
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[This message was edited by Wise Young on Feb 16, 2002 at 12:19 PM.]
1. Large targets for mouse clicks. You may have noticed that I have set larger text sizes and wide spacings in the front page. This increases the mouse click target for people who may be using head mouses. There are several small profile mouse click targets that I have been trying to fix: the small and closely spaced buttons for posting. I think that it is a problem because some people are hitting the wrong button when they are posting.
2. Minimum scrolling. The targets are also in the middle of the window and most of the popular forums can be clicked without scrolling. Scrolling is a problem for many people because the Windows has very small button for scrolling. You have to press small buttons at the edge of the window. By the way, I think this may be one reason why relatively few people participate in the featured poll which is at the bottom of the main page. Several people have written to me saying that they never knew that there was a poll at the bottom of the page. Many people may not know that they can scroll the window (at least on Internet Explorer on Mac) by hitting the space bar.
3. Mimumum number of mouse clicks to view or post topics. At the present, if a person sets up the carecure bulletin board as his/her home page, he/she can view the most recent topic with one mouse click, the most recent message in any of the most recent 50 topic inside a forum with two mouse clicks, and post a new topic or posting with three mouse clicks. This is about as low as I can make it.
4. Inverted posting order. As you know, this bulletin board always has the latest topic or posting on top. This again was chosen to minimize mouse clicks and scrolling. While some people have been confused by the inverse time order of posting, it allows people to see the latest postings in long threads without having to click small buttons for secondary pages.
5. Long topic and message listings. To mimimize the necessity of going to secondary pages to see topics and messages, I have set each forum to display 50 topics and 20 messages per topic on the first page.
I would welcome suggestions from members concerning ways to help improve navigation.
Wise.
[
[This message was edited by Wise Young on Feb 16, 2002 at 12:19 PM.]