Avoid Within-Page Links

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for February 21 is now online at:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/within_page_links.html
	
Summary:
On the Web, users have a clear mental model for a hypertext link:
it should bring up a new page.
Within-page links violate this model and thus cause confusion.

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Usability Week 2006 conference

THIS FRIDAY, Feb. 24: Last chance to save 10% on registration for New York

  > New York, March 26-31
  > London, May 21-26
  > San Francisco, June 19-24
  > Sydney, July 16-21

In-depth training:
  > 3-day Intensive Camp: Usability in Practice
  > 3-day Immersion: Tog on Interaction Design

10 specialized full-day tutorials

More info and full program:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events

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In 1995 I wrote a survey of research into navigating large information
spaces. It's amazing how many of these ideas are still not in common use
eleven years later.

  > http://www.useit.com/papers/navigating_large_information_spaces

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Readers outside the U.S. can count themselves lucky not to be subjected to
NBC's coverage of the Winter Olympics. But even NBC is tolerable when
watched on a digital video recorder: I set it to start recording every
evening at 8 and then I start watching at 9: this gives me an extra hour
to analyze eyetracking data and I can use the DVR to skip over commercials
and boring events. It's easily possible to watch 3 hours of NBC broadcast
in 2 hours of viewing.

The entire concept of watching a broadcast at the mercy of the producers'
desire to stretch out the good parts across as much time as possible is
getting to be obsolete. The experience from using the Web makes people
impatient and forms a desire to control your own experience: to get what
you want, when you want it. Non-clickable TV provides a sub-standard user
experience for events like the Olympics with multiple components, where
different people are interested in different things.