Hi Demian,
On Thu, 29 Apr 2004 18:26:23 +0100, Demian Turner wrote:
>> This holds true for websites too, IMHO. If the nav block is on
>> the left, when you click on a category, there are three options:
>> 1] the category contents listing (for instance the list of
>> article titles) is shown in the main pane, and you click to see
>> the chosen item expanded. There's a paging system to break long
>> listings into more pages. Example: http://news.swzone.it/
>> 2] same as above, but the items are already expanded
>> in the main pane, ala slashdot (or any news/blog system).
>> 3] the category contents listing is shown in the left pane, where
>> once you had the cat tree, and you have a
>> "back to cat listing" link on the top. See the IBM site, for
>> instance.
>>
>> When I see a "related articles" box, I expect it to be a
>> list of articles on the same *subject* ( != same category), from
>> other sites or other categories (for instance, if I'm reading an
>> article about a new product, I'd expect to see a link to some e-
>> commerce site where I can buy it, or
>> to another review of the same product, or a link to a similar
>> product like Amazon does) or an advertisement on a related
>> resource (ala O'Reilly).
>>
>> "Related articles" is not "List of articles in the same category"!
>
> as an exercise, i went to the most popular site on the web which,
> according to alexa, is a sports site called espn.go.com that i've
> never heard of. the first article i clicked on looks like this:
>
> http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=1792200
>
> which fortunately for my example is quite similar to seagull's way
> of displaying related content ;-)
not to contradict you, but it's pretty much like the example #3
I gave above. As you said, it's "related content":
the article is about some Tillman. The "related content" and "Also see"
boxes on the right on the ESPN site are pointing to articles referring
to the Tillman guy, or about sth else mentioned in the article.
That's *semantically* different from "Listing of all the articles
in the same category".
Let's look at the ESPN page above. On the left, there's
a summary of the sub-categories of "NFL", with a link to
the main "NFL" page. Click on "Players" in that left menu.
You'll see a page with the content listing in the main pane.
Idem for "Schedule" and each other cat.
> so i can see where you're coming from with your points, however the
> publisher module i believe has a few higher priority things that
> need fixing, like getting rid of frames which i'm still not sure
> how to while maintaining cats consistently on the left.
What I'm trying to tell is that the "Related articles" box
should be moved to the left (i.e. close to the nav tree),
maybe above the nav tree, or in place of the nav tree,
and it should be renamed to better match its contents.
Then, when the other top priority things have been solved,
the focus could switch to adding a real "Related content" module
(with contents of a similar taxonomy to the one of the article,
based on some full-text search results).
The "News box" can safely be moved to the right,
because it's more like a "spotlight", so not only the semantics,
but also the balance of the page is preserved ;-)
HTH
Best regards,
--
Lorenzo Alberton
http://pear.php.net/user/quipo
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