[Pmwiki-users] Re: RE: Test of page drafts

[Christian Ridderström]

On Tue, 20 Jul 2004, Kass Lloyd wrote:

> An icon is a bit more visual then a ? link, and would help people who
> are new to wikis know whats going on easier.

I might be conservative here, but I don't really think icons are always
easier to understand. When I used MoinMoin (another wiki-engine), they
used icons for different actions such as "edit", "view history" etc, and I
always found it difficult to remember which icon was what. The reason for
this could of course be a bad choice of icons, but OTOH that means
choosing an icon isn't trivial.

> I'm just rambleing.. :D but.. a "?" link to create a new page is less
> intuitive then an icon or other visual indicator that it is a link
> that hasn't been made yet.

Here I agree with you, but there is a cookbook recepy for making the '?' 
become e.g. "Create" in blue superscript. (That's much more obvious to 
me).

> In Wikipedia they use blue underlined links for regular links to pages
> or outside, and red text underlined for wiki links that hasn't been made
> yet. Its a little more visual and it dosn't interupt the current text.

I used wikipedia yesterday (looking at TLA--three letter acronyms) and I
was fooled several times, thinking a page existed when it didn't. This
might be an extreme example though, since the entire TLA-page was filled
with links (either blue or red).

Anyway, I didn't find it "natural" enough that red means a link to a
non-existing page (I probably would if I'd stopped to think about it
though). Finally, let's not forget about people who are colour blind...

(Btw, does anybody know what percentage that is? I think abt 10% of
males have partial colour blindness, but I can't remember).

> An average user without knowledge of a wiki will see? a sentence? with
> these question marks? on various words. It breaks up the sentence and
> makes it more difficult to read. By useing an icon or different color
> for the unmade wiki page link you don't intrupt the natural flow of
> the sentence.

I agree, btw here's the link to the cookbook recepy:
	http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/CustomLinksToCreatePage

/Christian

-- 
Christian Ridderstr?m                           http://www.md.kth.se/~chr