A Page Structure Pattern from
Patterns for Personal Web Sites
A page expresses a single idea, or a set of related ideas. That idea can be a story one hundred paragraphs long, or a two-sentence footnote. Part of the beauty of Web pages is that they can be as short or long as necessary. They aren't bound by the physical restrictions of printed media.
Therefore, create pages of a length appropriate to the subject.
Example: Mamoo's Advice on Coming Out is a very long page, but is one tightly connected story told in the author's distinctive voice. Breaking it into multiple pages would interrupt its flow, thereby reducing its emotional impact.
Writing pages of appropriate length enhances Offline Readability by making it easy to download pages for later reading. A visitor only has to download one page, rather than visiting & downloading multiple pages (and possibly fixing broken links, if they're not Relative Links).
Note: access to Mamoo's Advice on Coming Out is restricted. Snickering Lemming has given permission to post the user name & password here: guest/getajob.
Last updated 6 July 2003
http://www.rdrop.com/~half/Creations/Writings/Web.patterns/appropriate.length.html
All contents ©2002-2003 Mark L. Irons