The Saugeen Times

ICONS vs. Words

Internet & Technology

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Over time the Saugeen and Kincardine times have evolved the user interface so that readers can navigate quickly.

One thing that surprises us is that some new readers do not recognize some of our iconic symbols like . If you put your mouse over this a little hand appears and you know that this is a 'hot' icon and it will do something. It's not too hard to guess that this is going to go up. We put that down at the bottom of the first column in every article.

We are trying to make it easier for you.

Now another symbol that we have is the fast forward icon that consists of two triangles (if you click on this one, it will just refresh this page)

This is now the universal symbol for fast forward. If you have a recent laptop, you'll see it above your keyboard. If you have a DVD, you'll see it there. The kids know it well, but some adults are more used to words. We thought we'd give our readers a few more hints, so yesterday we introduced the symbol . Ah ha, it looks the same as the old one, but we've added a nuance that we hope new readers will like. When you hover over , it will change to red indicating it is a hot link. If you are using Internet Explorer as over 93% of our readers do, you will see the words 'read more' appear too.

Those using Firefox or Chrome will not see 'read more' This is due to some silly squabble over standards between the organizations. Both Firefox and Chrome could display the words, but they refuse to do so. We could force the words, but we'd have to load a script for each hyperlink reference, which won't be necessary as people progress.

There are not standards for how web sites present hyperlinks. Some very large web sites are not consistent. Some have blue links, which most recognize like this

www.canadiancommunitynews.com

If you hover your cursor over this, you'll see a hand appear and know that this link is hot. Most of the time, but not always blue letters that are underlined are hot.

Some very large web sites use red like

www.canadiancommunitynews.com

Others mix black, red and blue. (kind of tacky)

We sometimes in the Letters section or the Event Planner use the words 'Click Here'

Sometimes, when we really mean business, we throw in the Icon This combines words and animation. We could add sound that would say in French and English 'click here'. Whew!

As you can see we really want you to read what our hardworking reporters and contributors have written and it is very frustrating to us to have a first time reader have trouble navigating. It's not like a book at our old library way up on that dusty shelf.

Sometimes pictures are hot. Usually we put words below or above that ask the user to click on them. You'll see that at the end of this article for the rotating ads.

Now, if you've read this far, you'll realize that our words are in vain because you got here, you know what to do. The people who have not gotten here are the ones we want to convince how easy it is.

Thanks for being patient

P.S. We don't favour words over icons necessarily, but we have well over 50,000 articles and pictures that people need to look at or have looked at so we should try to do some standardization.

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Sunday, February 28, 2010