Site Reference Helps Add Value
Posted on April 30, 2007
If you publish a website or a blog, you are an expert in what you know. Or if you don’t consider yourself an expert, most likely you know much more about your topic than many of your readers. With every topic comes a set of vocabulary that the reader must know in order to properly understand your message. While topic specific jargon is true of any area of focus, this is especially indicative of technical related sites. For many readers all of the acronyms seem like vegetable soup: What does HTML, CSS, and FTP mean they may wonder? As a techie, I am all too guilty at times of assuming my reader understands such words. At the same time, so as not to be guilty of logorrhea infanitum, I have employed two not-common enough, but accepted methods for assisting my readers:
- Cursor:help
- Site Glossary
Cursor:help
Cursor:help refers to an attribute in CSS. when you mouse over the acronym CSS you notice an exclamation mark and description. This is a help to users to know more about the meaning or significance of the word.
To add Cursor:help to your site:
- Place the following in your style.css or main style sheet:
.TSDef
{COLOR: #CC6633;
CURSOR: help;
TEXT-DECORATION: none;}
Change the text color to your choosing and bold the word by adding "font-weight: bold;" - Employ the <span> tag to create the effect: <span class="TSDef" title="Hyper Text Mark-up Language. HTML is the basic language of the web.">HTML</span>
<span - opens the span tag
class="TSDef" relates to the class defined in the style sheet
title="" is the information you want to appear in the mouseover
</span> closes the tag
Example: Cursor:Help
Add Site Glossary:
- Create a link to the page and specific location on the page of the word:
<a href="http://www.thoughtsparks.net/glossary/#HTML">HTML [Glossary]</a>
Specific page is: http://www.thoughtsparks.net/glossary/
Specific location is: #HTML
- The text [Glossary] could be replaced with an image icon or just hyperlink the word itself.
To add a specific location place the tags <a name="HTML"></a> around or next to the location i.e. <a name="HTML">HTML</a> on the glossary page.
Example: HTML[Glossary Term] or HTML
Combine the Two
You will notice in the top paragraph that I actually combined the two methods into one giving brief explanation w/ a link to the glossary explanation.
Example: HTML
You now have two options for enabling your readers to more fully understand your subject matter. Both of these are fairly standard conventions on the web and will add value to your site.
Filed Under Web and Tech Helps, user interface, CSS Made Easy |
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4 Responses to “Site Reference Helps Add Value”
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Hey Phil, You’re back. I hope your weekend was restful. And as usual, you’ve come up with a terrific post. You know I’ve suffered from the tech-talk. I really like your idea about the glossary and links. Way cool. Plus, I’m about ready to look into the gradual reformatting of my CSS for font and color. Slowly. Very slowly.
Right now, the latest stoopid thing I’ve done is to delete things in flickr I didn’t think I’d need anymore. Lo and behold, the pictures I had in previous posts are now “not available.” What a dork. I do know what a URL is, and that’s how my pictures were linked. Oh well. Square one. Endless learning. Keeps me young.
I’ll look forward to your excellent posts.
Great tipps and help - thank you so much. It’s a wild world out there in the www…
Thanks Kelly, yeah you could tell I was out and down for a day or two. I run hard and sometimes I just have to pull-back and recoup. I’ve got a string of (possibly endless) posts to give practical helps for bloggers. I probably could write all day long and never run out of stuff. It is the world WIDE web after all
Su, thanks for the contact. Love the direction of the site. I appreciate your photographic flair. You should look into posting to http://www.sxc.hu and/or http://www.photo.net/. I use sxc.hu as they have many photos for public consumption. That’s where I got most of the photos elements for my banner.
As a response to this aricle I have drafted (just testing now) a new plugin to do just this for NucleusCMS users. I have also created a new wiki page “Why Define” to which I’ve added this page as the first resource. It is a very very very good article. One to be book marked I feel.
http://wiki.lordmatt.co.uk/index.php/Why_Define