Avoiding link text duplication?

[Leif K-Brooks]

I know it's a good idea to make link text uniquely identify its target,
because some browsers have a feature to show all of the links in a page.
But what if there's a caption, followed by a few different links about
the heading which either have to duplicate the heading or be
non-descriptive?

For instance, I have a page with some desktop backgrounds on it
(http://www.ecritters.biz/bgs/). The sizes (800x600, 1024x768) are the
link text for links to the backgrounds, which makes for very repetitive
link text. I could make the title the link when there's only one size,
but not when there are multiple sizes (like the lime background).

 

[Neal]

I know it's a good idea to make link text uniquely identify its target,
because some browsers have a feature to show all of the links in a page.
But what if there's a caption, followed by a few different links about
the heading which either have to duplicate the heading or be
non-descriptive?

For instance, I have a page with some desktop backgrounds on it
(http://www.ecritters.biz/bgs/). The sizes (800x600, 1024x768) are the
link text for links to the backgrounds, which makes for very repetitive
link text. I could make the title the link when there's only one size,
but not when there are multiple sizes (like the lime background).

Nothing wrong with:

Download: limebg-800x600, limebg-1024x768, limebg-1280x960 to my eye. You
may want to rename the other images in a similar format (while leaving the
original on the server in case someone has bookmarked it) for consistency.

 

[Toby A Inkster]

The sizes (800x600, 1024x768) are the
link text for links to the backgrounds, which makes for very repetitive
link text. I could make the title the link when there's only one size,
but not when there are multiple sizes (like the lime background).

<h4>Lime</h4>
<ul>
<li><a href="lime-640" title="Lime background, 640x480">640x480</a></li>
<li><a href="lime-800" title="Lime background, 800x600">800x600</a></li>
<li><a href="lime-1024" title="Lime background, 1024x768">1024x768</a></li>
</ul>

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

I know it's a good idea to make link text uniquely identify its
target, because some browsers have a feature to show all of the links
in a page.

Yes. This is especially relevant to people using speech browsers, text-
only browsers, or very small screen browsers. One might think that for a
page containing backgrounds for download, this would not matter much. But
it's still a good principle - and it's useful to remember that link texts
are food for search engines, too.

But what if there's a caption, followed by a few different
links about the heading which either have to duplicate the heading or
be non-descriptive?

Then use some shortened form, such as
Download: <a href="...">lime 800&times;600</a>,
<a href="...">lime 1024&times;768</a>, ...

For a background that is available in one size only, you could use
Download: <a href="...">blue</a> (1280&times;1024)

If there is a large number of such links on one page, an advanced browser
would let the user request a list of all links in alphabetic order,
thereby getting a different listing of the available alternatives.