Writing Hyperlinks

[Hugo Roy]

Hi all,

I know it's not really specific to Free Software. However, I am
sure this could be interesting to anyone reading this list and to
all folks publishing articles or blog posts on fsfe.org web sites.

This is a short article on what makes a good hyperlink:

Writing Hyperlinks: Salient, Descriptive, Start with Keyword
<http://www.nngroup.com/articles/writing-links/>

Summary: To help users quickly find what they need, anchor
text should stand out from the body content and accurately
describe the page that it refers to.

Best,
--
Hugo Roy, Free Software Foundation Europe, <www.fsfe.org>
Deputy Coordinator, FSFE Legal Team, <www.fsfe.org/legal>
Coordinator, FSFE French Team, <www.fsfe.org/fr>

Support Free Software, sign up! <https://fsfe.org/support>
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[Robert Kehl]

Hello,

[...] I am sure this could be interesting to anyone reading this
list and to all folks publishing articles or blog posts on
fsfe.org web sites.

The passage that most amuses me is the second conclusion:

"Second, don?t force users to read the text surrounding a link to
determine where it leads. This is both time consuming and frustrating."

In other words: "Don't write anything, they won't read it anyway -
just link to some other place to keep them busy."

Not really my kind of experience nor liking.

Cheers,

Rob

[Laura Arjona Reina]

Post by Robert Kehl
Hello,

[...] I am sure this could be interesting to anyone reading this
list and to all folks publishing articles or blog posts on
fsfe.org web sites.

"Second, don?t force users to read the text surrounding a link to
determine where it leads. This is both time consuming and frustrating."
In other words: "Don't write anything, they won't read it anyway -
just link to some other place to keep them busy."

Well, I think the article is not so ambitious. I think it just says that
between these two possible sentences with links:

A) Alice wrote <a href="blogpost.html">a blog post</a> about her
experience deploying free software web services.

B) Alice wrote <a href="blogpost.html">a blog post about her experience
deploying free software web services</a>.

option B seems to be better than A, because our eyes inconsciously jump
to the blue underlined text before reading the rest (the same with ads,
graphics, and so).

Regards

Laura Arjona

Post by Robert Kehl
Not really my kind of experience nor liking.
Cheers,
Rob
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[Otto Kekäläinen]

Post by Hugo Roy
I know it's not really specific to Free Software. However, I am
sure this could be interesting to anyone reading this list and to
all folks publishing articles or blog posts on fsfe.org web sites.
Writing Hyperlinks: Salient, Descriptive, Start with Keyword
<http://www.nngroup.com/articles/writing-links/>
Summary: To help users quickly find what they need, anchor
text should stand out from the body content and accurately
describe the page that it refers to.

I've been reading the Alertbox newsletter by Jacob Nielsen of this
very same company for maybe 10 years now, and all the advice I've read
there has been very good and evidence based. I warmly recommend. In
particular if you don't agree with what the recommendations are, you
should really push yourself to become enlightened :)

[Matthias Kirschner]

Hi Hugo,

Post by Hugo Roy
Writing Hyperlinks: Salient, Descriptive, Start with Keyword
<http://www.nngroup.com/articles/writing-links/>
Summary: To help users quickly find what they need, anchor
text should stand out from the body content and accurately
describe the page that it refers to.

Thank you for the interesting article. Maybe you also want to share it
with web@?

Regards,
Matthias