Slightly OT. Date order

J

James Hutton

I'm preparing a page regarding the Falklands Conflict, giving a day by
day account of events, with links to videos and archive material from
the time. Currently I've got the dates in reverse order, ie, the oldest
at the bottom of the page and the latest at the top of the page. I did
this so that regular visitors wouldn't have to scroll down each visit.
Although on one level this seems the most "intuitive" I wonder what
other people would do?

James
 
M

Mike Minor

James Hutton said:
I'm preparing a page regarding the Falklands Conflict, giving a day by day
account of events, with links to videos and archive material from the
time. Currently I've got the dates in reverse order, ie, the oldest at the
bottom of the page and the latest at the top of the page. I did this so
that regular visitors wouldn't have to scroll down each visit. Although on
one level this seems the most "intuitive" I wonder what other people would
do?

James

As a bit of a history buff, I would prefer to see events in chronological
order, but that's just me. I would also be interested in looking at your
site when it's done.

"Stupid" Mike
 
A

Andy Dingley

Currently I've got the dates in reverse order, ie, the oldest
at the bottom of the page and the latest at the top of the page.

Chronological is the best choice for order.

Reverse chronological is only useful because it reduces the navigation
distance for the most interesting item, i.e. the most-recent is
already at the top of the page. This benefit only applies if "latest"
is of significantly more interest than the others, i.e. it supercedes
the others (warnings) or is probably of more immediate interest
(emails).

Any time you're looking at a sequence of _multiple_ items, stick with
forward chronology.
 
J

James Hutton

Mike said:
As a bit of a history buff, I would prefer to see events in chronological
order, but that's just me. I would also be interested in looking at your
site when it's done.

"Stupid" Mike
Mike,

Still WIP (but being worked on, working nights, kids, wife and beer
permitting!)

http::/www.rna-10-area.net/falklands.html

With over 100 days etc still to do, a rewrite will be a major
undertaking, but I'm always open to suggestions.

James
 
M

Mike Minor

Mike,

Still WIP (but being worked on, working nights, kids, wife and beer
permitting!)

http::/www.rna-10-area.net/falklands.html

With over 100 days etc still to do, a rewrite will be a major undertaking,
but I'm always open to suggestions.

James

Very nice start you have there. I can remember following the progress of the
conflict in the news back then. It's always intersting to review events like
these to see how they compare to what's happening in the world today.

As for the layout, with the exception of putting the events in chronological
order, it's appearance is very nice.

Mike
 
N

nice.guy.nige

While the city slept, James Hutton ([email protected])
feverishly typed...
I'm preparing a page regarding the Falklands Conflict, giving a day by
day account of events, with links to videos and archive material from
the time.

Sounds like an interesting project.
Currently I've got the dates in reverse order, ie, the
oldest at the bottom of the page and the latest at the top of the
page. I did this so that regular visitors wouldn't have to scroll
down each visit. Although on one level this seems the most
"intuitive" I wonder what other people would do?

How "On This Day" at the top, followed by a forwards chronological list,
maybe "The Events Leading Up To This Day..."?

Just my twopenn'orth

Cheers,
Nige
 
D

dorayme

"Andy Dingley said:
Chronological is the best choice for order.

Reverse chronological ... benefit only applies if "latest"
is of significantly more interest than the others, i.e. it supercedes
the others (warnings) or is probably of more immediate interest
(emails).

Any time you're looking at a sequence of _multiple_ items, stick with
forward chronology.

There is a third way, generally speaking, (OP's context might
need to be either one way or another and not this third?). In
some pages, eg. a page with a directory of newletters over a
number of years for some organization, it is useful to put the
listing link of the most recent at the top and then the rest,
including a repeat of the latest, in chronological order below.
This is an ideal context for this, but the idea can be used for
other less clear cut ones. If unsure, do it along these lines, as
it is likely to be more advantageous than not.
 
D

dorayme

"Mike Minor said:
Very nice start you have there.

A couple of things, a little more space is needed between the
list markers and the text in the list items in the left
navigation pane. And I'd say to remove the W3C logos eventually,
these don't have much to do with the material. Imagine a book in
which there were "professional accreditation" logos on each page
and you will see what is not quite right with the idea.
 
T

Toby A Inkster

James said:
Currently I've got the dates in reverse order, ie, the oldest
at the bottom of the page and the latest at the top of the page. I did
this so that regular visitors wouldn't have to scroll down each visit.
Although on one level this seems the most "intuitive" I wonder what
other people would do?

Ah, there's the rub. Certainly most blogs and such have their newest
material at the top, so that it what people are probably most used to.

However, there are a fre blogs that I read very frequently -- so if I want
to read the articles in date order, I need to skim down the page to find
the last article I read on my previous visit, then scroll up the page to
get to each new article. If one particular article is fairly long, then
I'll need to scroll down slightly to read to the end of it. So
oldest-first certainly has its advantages too, and that's what most
web-based forums use, so people shouldn't find that too confusing either.

Whichever way you choose, I'd suggest including an RSS or Atom feed of
your articles. That way, if people read your site regularly, and don't
like the order you've chosen, they can use their feed reader to present
the articles in a different order.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact
Geek of ~ HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python*/Apache/Linux

* = I'm getting there!
 
J

James Hutton

Toby said:
Ah, there's the rub. Certainly most blogs and such have their newest
material at the top, so that it what people are probably most used to.

However, there are a fre blogs that I read very frequently -- so if I want
to read the articles in date order, I need to skim down the page to find
the last article I read on my previous visit, then scroll up the page to
get to each new article. If one particular article is fairly long, then
I'll need to scroll down slightly to read to the end of it. So
oldest-first certainly has its advantages too, and that's what most
web-based forums use, so people shouldn't find that too confusing either.

Whichever way you choose, I'd suggest including an RSS or Atom feed of
your articles. That way, if people read your site regularly, and don't
like the order you've chosen, they can use their feed reader to present
the articles in a different order.
Toby, hadn't thought of an RSS feed, but that will have to wait until
I've had some sleep! Night shifts play hell, especially in the fine weather!

James
 
T

Toby A Inkster

James said:
Night shifts play hell, especially in the fine weather!

Indeed -- my other half's a doctor, and has just spent 4 months working in
an A&E dept; night shifts a-plenty.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact
Geek of ~ HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python*/Apache/Linux

* = I'm getting there!
 
M

Mike Minor

However, there are a fre blogs that I read very frequently -- so if I want
to read the articles in date order, I need to skim down the page to find
the last article I read on my previous visit, then scroll up the page to
get to each new article. If one particular article is fairly long, then
I'll need to scroll down slightly to read to the end of it. So
oldest-first certainly has its advantages too, and that's what most
web-based forums use, so people shouldn't find that too confusing either.

I agree with you on this point. But isn't that same as "top posting"? I
thought that was a major no-no. In blogs and such, I too would rather see
the most recent response at the top, especially if I've been following the
posts. I see it as a waste of time to have to scroll down to see what, if
anything, has been posted since I last looked at it.

"Stupid" Mike
 

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