[Bf-docboard] nav bars

Ryan Dale ryandale at UDel.Edu
Fri Aug 4 18:23:28 CEST 2006


 > Although there are few loose ends, I'm calling this project complete.

Impressive work Matt!  It was sorely needed and you did a great job on 
it.  It makes the manual look more professional, and I hope your changes 
will make it easier for editors and readers alike.

One potentially misleading issue I see is the nav bar at the bottom of 
some pages (the one with "Previous Page", "Contents", and "Next Page"). 
   I'm guessing they're remnants of the original manual because some 
pages have them and some pages don't.  I think they sort of force an 
artificially linear structure on the manual.

What about completely removing those nav bars?  The TOC page would 
become a master list of all the content and would define the structure 
of the manual.  Need to add a page?  Add a link to it in the TOC and 
you're done, instead of working out which page should be "previous" and 
which should be "next", then editing the nav bars of those respective pages.

Sure, a reader would have to return to the TOC to choose the next page, 
but 1) it's unlikely someone would read the manual "cover to cover" in a 
linear fashion, and 2) I think keeping the TOC as a one-stop-shop for 
all the content outweighs that inconvenience.

-Ryan


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