why is this page like this?
The Page
Long pages with extensive intra-page navigation are best avoided, usually.
They push their complexity into the face of the user. They have to learn about
the additional wayfinding signage needed to help them to navigate. Devices
such as "top of the page" links, and a ruling line between the intra-page
menu and the actual content.
But they do contain one big advantage: the content can be viewed in its totality
with a simple scroll, or using Find. If this list was broken up into separate
pages, browsing the full list would require multiple pages transitions.
As always, the shape of the site depends on the content to be accommodated:
Form follows Content. If this list grew say twice in size, the argument to
split it into multiple pages could grow stronger.
Of course, the page would be much shorter without the annotation, but the
annotation is the value-add. Without it, you might as well go to Yahoo! And
it also helps with the cross-discipline nature of this sort of work —
not everyone maybe aware of the use of "taxonomy" as applied to
Search Engines, compared to its usual academic meaning.
The Menu
Intra-page navigation is always problematic. The ABC...Z alphabetical bar
is popular for indexes. But here, categorisation seemed more appropriate than
an A-to-Z listing. Still, with fifteen categories, it seemed sensible to introduce
extra spacing every fourth entry in order to improve the readability of the
menu.
If you look at the ACM's listing of special interest groups
×
ACM's
listing of SIGs
you can see the difficulties of the A-to-Z treatment. Where would you find
the SIG for Knowledge Management? Under K, no. But they must cover it in one
of their SIGs, so you have to scroll through the whole lot. Categorising the
list would have been a better solution.