Sunday Night Sweet
The WWW page-length debate
Jorn Barger January 2000
Say you have a 100k article you want to put on the Web. How many webpages should you divide it into? The questions to weigh include:
# How long will it take each section to display?
# How much will it disrupt the reader's concentration to load a new section?
# Is one long page more boring than several short pages?
# Is it easier to understand if different concepts are on separate pages?
# What if the reader wants to print it?
# What if the reader wants to search it?
# What about net-wide search engines?
# Which will make it easier to find a particular section?
# How many clicks will it take to find the desired section?
# Which will make it easier to maintain the pages?
# Will people scroll all the way to the end?
# Will people forget what's scrolled offscreen?
# Can you make more banner ad money with multiple pages?
# Can you track readers better with multiple pages?
# Is it disorienting to scroll through
a long document?
# Are scrollbars unpleasant to use?
# Are too many choices unpleasant to see at once?
Below are quotes on these topics from many different web style guides, with a link to the guide after the quote.
There are also a few comments of my own.
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How long will it take each section to display?
"There are two upper limits on a document's size. One is that long documents will take longer to transfer , and so a reader will not be able to simply jump to it and back as fast as he or she can think. This depends a lot on the link speed of course." W3C95?
"1. First, your main page (including HTML, graphics,...
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