![]() ![]() Although the rationale behind stems from some clear commercial objectives and therefore often preferred by project managers, it is the designer’s duty to make clear to managers that users do not care. As designers, it is our duty to design the system to make users the initiators of actions rather than the responders.ĭesigners are tempted to enforce users to actually use the interface or browse through the site they have created. Any deviations from this convention result in a more design-oriented and less user-oriented design.Īs Shneiderman claims, experienced users strongly desire the sense that they are in charge of the system and that the system responds to their actions. ![]() Users must know, understand and anticipate what is going on and what will happen once user interface elements are used. Users need to be able to rely on consistency of the user interface and know that they won’t be distracted or disrupted during the interaction. Bruce Tognazzini ( First Principles of Interaction Design)Ĭlaim that a user-friendly and effective user interface places users in control of the application they are using.Theo Mandel ( User Interface Design Principles).Ben Shneiderman ( 8 Golden Rules of Interface Design),.Leading user interface and usability researchers such as Place users in controlįrom the usability point of view the decision to enforce opening links in new windows violates one of the fundamental principles of the user interface design: users should always be in control of the interface they are interacting with. That’s not user-friendly, and that’s not a good user experience we, web designers, strive for. Furthermore, some visitors may not even realize that a new window was opened and hit the back-button mercilessly - without any result. Users also don’t like to deal with dozens of opened tabs and some visitors tend to become quickly angry with the disabled back button. Visitors of less-heavy-linkage-sites are more likely to open some particular link in new window to remain on the site and continue to browse through it afterward. Visitors to the sites with heavy linking are more willing to have links opened in new windows then open dozens of links in new windows manually. At first glance the decision to open links in new windows or not depends on the given site and the preferences of its visitors. Some of the icons used by various web sites appear below.No, they shouldn’t. Authors can add this information to links by placing it in parenthesis at the end of the link, for example by saying "Biographical sketch (opens new window)." Some sites use icons to convey this same message. It is up to the authors to alert the users. Then when the try to click on the Back button in the browser, nothing happens, because there is no previous link to go back to in a new window or tab.Īs with links to non-HTML files, browsers could potentially perform the function of alerting users, but current browsers do not perform this functionality. Sighted users can see the new window open, but users with cognitive disabilities may have difficulty interpreting what just happened. Older screen readers do not alert the user at all. Newer screen readers alert the user when a link opens a new window, though only after the user clicks on the link. The accessibility issue is that some users can get confused with the new windows or tabs. ![]() Others concede that they can be appropriate at times, but nearly everyone agrees that users ought to be alerted when the link does not open in the current window or frame. Some people would like to ban them entirely. There is much debate about the merits of links that open in new windows, pop-up windows, or other frames. Links to New Windows, Pop-ups, Other Frames, or External Web Sites ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |